


watch with serenity

by thisstableground



Series: Main Timeline ITH Fics [7]
Category: In the Heights - Miranda
Genre: Gen, Grief/Mourning, Minor Character Death, set just before and in the aftermath of usnavi losing his parents
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-09-24
Updated: 2019-05-06
Packaged: 2019-07-17 05:35:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 31,496
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16089128
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thisstableground/pseuds/thisstableground
Summary: "Inseparable, they even got sick together. They never got better, passed away that December, and left me with these memories like dying embers from a dream I can't remember."It's almost December, and turns out it isn't just the flu.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> a/n: I've put off writing this one for a while but here it is. Usnavi's 17 - a month away from turning 18 - in my version of the timeline, and as always Vanessa and Nina are only a year younger than Usnavi and Benny, just so you can contextualize.
> 
> Content warning: the entire fic is about the buildup to, event and aftermath of Usnavi losing his parents, so expect a lot of grief- and death-related stuff here.

Later he’ll try and trace steps back through indistinct memory to find the source, like a detective walking the last street the victim was seen on. Who brought this into their lives, where did it start, whose fault is it, the lack of an answer either a blessing or a burden dependent on what the truth is. Maybe it’s best Usnavi will never uncover it: he doesn’t know who got sick first, but he knows he got worse first.

It’s inevitable year after year, with the season descending to cold and how many people with how many kinda questionable hygiene practices pass through a bodega and a high school on the daily, breathing all over the place and germing things up. But the De la Vegas can’t afford to be sick this year, not after Pai’s medical bills in September for a chest infection he’s only just recovered from. Things have been pretty tight. Heat shoulda been on a few weeks back in these temperatures but they’re stretching as late as possible before they give in on that, food should be more than it is but they’re stretching that too, Usnavi should probably be sleeping off the flu that all three of them have been suffering through for the past week and a half but no time for it.

Instead, he gets home from school, eats early dinner of the same leftovers they’ve been making last for three days now, and then straight to work to help out because they’re keeping the store open later than they usually do tryna get some extra business, which means longer shifts and all hands on deck. It ain’t the first time he’s worked sick, probably won’t be the last, but man, Usnavi can’t remember if he’s ever worked while he felt this much like he just fell off a building before. Damn flu just won't get shook off.

He glances around for a second to check the store's empty and seeing that he’s alone leans folded over at the waist to rest his head on his crossed arms against the counter, bliss in a peaceful moment of darkness. The lights here are so fucking bright. The people are so fucking loud. Just one moment of resting and he’ll be back on…well, not top form, but like maybe scraping a pass, and ain’t that always been the Usnavi way anyway?

Some time later, someone says “¡Usnavi, despierta!” very loudly, followed by a scratchy cough.

Usnavi stands up straight so fast he nearly falls backwards. “¡Estoy despierto!”

“I said your name three times before you answered,” Pai disagrees. 

“I was just, y’know, deep in thought.” There’s a weird nearly-painful feeling in Usnavi’s chest, not quite stabbing but almost, like the itch of deep breathing in icy air. Was that there earlier? He coughs into his hand, then makes a face, because turns out that was the gross and very solid kind of cough. Ew. Shit like that got no business being inside a person’s lungs.

"Go to bed,” Pai orders. 

“Shift ain’t over,” Usnavi says, wiping his hand off on a tissue and then applying hand sanitizer fastidiously.

“Your shift’s over when I say it’s over, and I say that’s now,” Pai says. The bell jingles on the door. “Rosa, !justo a tiempo! Come intimidate your son into an early night’s sleep, por favor.”

Mama takes one look at Usnavi’s admittedly pretty pitiful state, raises her eyebrows, and says “Usnavi, hora de dormir **,** vamos.”

“Yes, Mamá!”

“Your mother is truly a wonderful woman,” Pai says.

Honestly Usnavi can't disagree, he's too glad she won't let him pretend he's not tired. Climbing the stairs may as well be walking a ladder to the moon.  The apartment when they get in is freezing. It’s still early enough that his parents will be down in the bodega for a few more hours, and besides Usnavi’s way too old to crawl in between them in their bed for body heat in winter like he used to as a kid. But Mamá awkwardly manages to cram herself into the half a square foot of floorspace in Usnavi’s room that’s not taken up by the bed so that she can pack all three of their hot water bottles into his bed beside him then tucks the comforter right up around his chin. She kisses him on the cheek before she leaves, and even though it’s cold enough in the apartment Usnavi can see his breath in the air, there’s a different kind of warmth in the comfort of being home.

***

Usnavi wakes up sweating so much that his first instinct is to check it’s not one of the hot water bottles sprung a leak. His pajamas and his sheets are soaked through, and he’s  _hot_ , so hot that he flings open his door expecting to be greeted by the apartment in flames around him. Outside there’s only the dark hallway stretching out in front of him, spinning away when he attempts to step forwards and his legs straight up stop functioning.

“Mamá!” he tries to shout from his sudden position on the ground, but his voice comes out just a rasping sound. He’s frightened in the bewildering dark for a moment but they must have heard him fall because they’re coming out of their room and Pai’s helping him sit up.

“I fell over,” Usnavi says miserably.

Mama places her hand on his forehead and hisses in shock. “Usnavi De la Vega!” she says sharply, like she’s caught him making trouble. “Mateo, he’s burning up.”

“Don’t feel well,” Usnavi mumbles. Mamá strokes his hair. Pai says something about calling…someone? Usnavi curls up on the floor to go back to sleep.

Things glitch in and out randomly across the next few hours:  Kevin Rosario shows up at their door for some reason. Sitting in the back of Kevin’s cab. Mamá by Usnavi's side at the urgent care while a doctor tells him a whole lot of stuff he doesn’t even try and listen to.

Faint delirium covers next few days, next several days, Usnavi in a tedious cycle of sleeping, taking pills for something or another, coughing a lot in some majorly disgusting ways, everything hurting.  No school, which ain’t great: he’s done all his exams last year and all and he thinks he’s gonna graduate but it’s a fine line. He was gonna make up some grades this year so that he’ll more than only just pass. How many days has he missed? No sense of time passing, not that he ever had much of that to begin with. Nina stops by to deliver a dinner Camila prepared for them and he’s pretty sure she mentions that she brought him the schoolwork he missed at one point but when he asks, Mamá just tells him not to worry about it right now.

Another half-waking at a time of day Usnavi can’t determine, with his parents talking in low voices right next to him. How? There’s not space for all three of them in his room. He twitches his fingers round and feels a rougher fabric than bedsheets underneath him: ah, he’s lying on the couch. The satisfying conclusion of this little mystery is interrupted by the unsettling sensation of something being taken out of his mouth that he didn’t know was there.

“One-oh-two point eight, same as earlier.”

“That’s too high, Mateo, why isn’t it going down?”

“It’s not gone up any more all day, at least,” Pai says. His voice is flat and rough. He doesn’t sound at all like himself. “The doctor said it’s considered an emergency at one-oh-four, so he’s still in a safe range. He’s going to be fine, querida, nothing keeps a De la Vega down for long.”

“I don’t think I’ve seen him stay this still for this long since he was a baby,” Mamá says quietly.

“You sit with him. I have to get back to work.”

“Really? You’re really just going back to the store while he’s like this?”

Pai is silent for a long time, then says, “the money has to come from somewhere. If I hadn’t had all those damned appointments earlier this year…”

“Then god knows what would have happened to you and we’d be in even more of a mess right now, wouldn’t we?” Mama retorts. “You shouldn’t be working this much. You’ve barely slept in days, and this terrible flu. You need rest too, papi.”

“We all do. But if Usnavi does need to go to the hospital—“

“Don’t need hospital,” Usnavi cuts in, finally opening his eyes. “M’fine. Peachy keen. Walkin’ on sunshine. Where’s Abuela?”

He hasn’t seen her for days. Weeks? Forever. It must be why the air is so heavy and sad in here: Abuela always shines a light on the best paths to walk, when even his parents are stumbling in the night.

“I’m sorry, mijo, but you can’t see her right now, you’re still contagious. It could be very dangerous at her age.”

Usnavi contemplates this. His illness is dangerous. And expensive, already gotta pay for his urgent care visit and the antiviral drugs and the missed time off work for all of them. Hospital would mean more money, more work for everyone, paying to get there, paying for treatment. It’s a lot of pressure on him to not get worse, he thinks. How is he supposed to carry all this when all his aching body and brain wants is to rest, for everyone to be able to rest? “Tired. Wanna go home.”

“You are home, pequeño,” Mamá says.

“Oh,” he says, frowning around. She’s right. Lost track for a moment. “I want Abuela.”

Mamá sighs, a resigned and rattling sound. It turns into a cough, deep and wet and wheezing, like he’s never heard a person sound before, even when she’s had asthma attacks in the past. She takes a pull on her inhaler.

“Mamá!” Usnavi tries to sit up, limbs feeling about six times heavier than normal. “You sound like hell. Why ain’t you in bed?”

“Who’s the parent here?” she says, tapping him reproachfully on the tip of his nose. “It’s just the flu. Don’t upset yourself over it.”

They keep telling him things like that, but how is he supposed to stop when there’s so goddamn much to worry about? He weaponizes his stress to fret noisily at her until she finally agrees to go and lie down at least for an hour or so just to placate him.

Usnavi waits for Pai to make a joke like he usually would, about how Mamá’s so stubborn, about how Usnavi was obviously born so good at arguing just so someone on this Earth would be able to get through to her. Instead, he just stares at the door till after she leaves, rubbing the brim of his cap as though in thought.

“Pai?” Usnavi says, an unresolvable dread stabbing deep in his chest as painful as the pneumonia.

“It’s okay, little one,” Pai says, and he looks so tired, he looks as tired as Usnavi feels. “You just sleep. It’s going to be okay.”

***

In mid-November after an exhaustingly long week, Usnavi’s fever finally breaks, He’s still barely able to stay awake for more than an hour at a time, so he ain’t doing no celebratory dances yet, but the cough finally eases, he can finally breathe clear again. 

They're getting worse as he gets better, as though all their health is being transferred to Usnavi, leaving them drained and sickly. Shadows hanging over their eyes and their words and their spirits and it's strange to live a life where instead of singing in the morning Usnavi wakes up to coughing, or the sound of someone vomiting, or just his own heart beating a little too fast with constant anxiety because they're not getting better and it's starting to scare him. He keeps asking them to go to the doctor and they say not to worry, it’s just the flu. Mamá's started clutching her inhaler in one hand all day like a lifeline, and then one evening as November’s end is looming over the winter-white horizon, Pai collapses in the store.

“You gotta do something about this, Pai,” Usnavi says to him. “It’s been weeks, this definitely ain’t just flu, I know it ain't 'cause Abuela's had her flu shot but you still won't go to see her in case she catches somethin' off you, but what about all the other old folk who come into the store? And what if you’d hit your head when you passed out? You’re lucky me and Benny were in the bodega.”

He had to get Benny to help him take his dad upstairs. Even though it’s Benny, who’s been Usnavi’s best friend forever, it was somehow humiliating. This isn't the kind of home Benny's come to visit a million times over the years, unfamiliar even to Usnavi. The mess of the apartment because chores are nowhere near a priority for any of them at the moment, the unwelcoming chill of the air without the heat they can’t pay for, Benny standing in his parents’ bedroom while Mamá is sleeping there and Pai is shivering and too weak to stand. Usnavi heard Benny in the kitchen doing some of the dishes before he left, and it made him want to cry. 

“I didn’t pass out,” Pai insists. “It was a power nap.”

“In the middle of the aisle.”

“It was a very sudden power nap.” Pai coughs, the same rough bark that’s been clinging to Mamá’s lungs too. She turns over next to him in bed, but doesn’t wake up. It’s five in the evening, dark out already, and the apartment feels like a perpetual midnight these days.

“Why won’t you just let me take you to the hospital?” Usnavi pleads, and he's embarrassed of how close he is to tears but he's getting scared. It's been so long. Mamá's barely been conscious all day. “Or at least to a doctor, they gave me medicine, you need it too, this isn't going away by itself.”

Pai blinks slowly, then seems to drift off for a few minutes. Belatedly, as Usnavi’s about to leave and reheat another meal sent round by the Rosarios that nobody will have the appetite to eat, he murmurs “we just can’t afford to, Usnavi.”

_You found a way to afford it for me,_  Usnavi wants to say.  _You woulda taken me to hospital if it came to it._  But he’s terrified that maybe that’s exactly why they can’t afford to go themselves, and besides, maybe now they’ll both finally rest up and get better. Usnavi can pick up the slack for a while. So all he does is kiss Pai on his burning forehead and head down to the bodega, staying open as late as he can force himself to, all the time buried under the paralyzing weight of urgency. He’s at the store wondering if he should be upstairs watching over them instead, he’s waiting by their bed knowing every minute he’s there is a minute less of a paycheck that he could put towards helping, he’s torn between doing what his parents want and doing what he feels like he needs to and the sheer impossibility of two hospital bills with two out of three of them down for the count while they fight in the poverty cycle of overworking to pay bills accrued from the consequences of overworking.

There’s no possible way to manage everything that needs doing, no way to prioritize without sacrifice. The feeling of staring upwards and unmoving into a landslide too fast to run from, when the only thing to do is take the hit. There's people in the barrio helping but it's not enough, he’s too tired to work the hours he’s pulling  but what other choice is there when sickness is clinging to them so much more than him, both of them restless and increasingly incoherent by the day and then by the hour until he's not sure they know he's even in the room with them. Their fevers burn silent fires while every night Usnavi prays, by candlelight to keep electric costs down, his knees aching on the cold floor of his parent's bedroom.


	2. Chapter 2

New York City always wakes up in sound. None of the De la Vega family love how early they gotta start the day, and so his parents have always seemed to try and throw themselves into it as enthusiastically as possible like a big cheerful fuck you to the world. Mamá crooning along to the radio at 6AM, Pai yelling outside Usnavi’s door that they don’t run a breakfast-in-bed service so he’d better get up if he wants to get fed. Usnavi ain’t got no window in his room and season’s wrong for it anyhow, but in the summertime in the kitchen Pai likes to have the windows open, so they can hear the sounds of the Heights starting to move while they eat breakfast, traffic picking up and other radios one by one joining theirs as people crank the tunes to take the edge off the early hour.

The past week, quiet. Windows closed against the winter and it’s only Usnavi who's waking up early, his room dark as always stumbling to an equally-dark kitchen without the radio on. It’s tea, not coffee, that he’s brewing, to take through to his parent’s bedroom, where he sets the cups down and wakes them just enough to know that they've hydrated some before he goes. They’re so hazy even during the day that they don’t realize he’s still not gone back to school, that he’s the one been opening the store at 6.30 because the pre-work coffee rush is a solid profit they can’t afford to lose.He’ll run the bodega for an hour or so, then get Abuela to watch the counter for a hurried twenty minutes while he runs upstairs to take temperatures, clean up vomit, be a steady shoulder to lean on to walk someone to the bathroom. It’s an uncomfortably near-parental role he finds himself in, that leaves him aching on their behalf for the lack of dignity, and shaking on his own behalf because nobody ever told him how to function in this inverted dynamic.

Abuela takes both his unsteady hands when he gets back to the store. “Mijito…” she says.

“Lo se,” he answers. He knows, the concern in her voice and her eyes and all the meaning in that one single word. It’s November 30th, there hasn’t been a single day for the whole month that his parents were healthy. He ain’t been thinking about anything else. He knows. “I’m gonna do somethin’, I swear, it’s just…man, I don’t know _what_ I’m supposed to be doin’, Abuela, it’s way more complicated than just showin’ up to a doctor. I never figured I’d have to think about this stuff yet, not without one of them tellin’ me how.”

Abuela places her hand softly on his cheek. When did he get tall enough that she had to reach up so far to do that? He still remembers sitting on her lap when he was sad as a kid, or hiding his face against her hip when he was feeling shy as they stopped in the street every five steps to talk to someone she knew. 

“There’s always people here who will help you,” she tells him. He curls his hand around her wrist, takes strength in her presence.

“Okay,” he says. “Yeah, okay, I’ll go talk to the Rosarios tomorrow. Camila’s always good at knowing what to do, and Kevin can drive us somewhere if we need it, and I guess we’ll have to figure out the money later. I just…I want them to get better already.”

“Todos los hacemos,” Abuela says. “It’s been quiet round here with the three of you like this.”

Usnavi smiles at her. “Tomorrow, then,” he says. “We’ll be back to makin’ noise in no time.”

***

The Rosarios deadbolt their front door at night so Usnavi’s key is useless at this hour. He’s hammering against it as hard as he can and it should be deafening but his own ears feel deaf to it and nobody’s _answering_ , at least not until Kevin yells through the door at him.

“Juro por Dios, get away from my door, cabrón, I’m armed!”

“It’s me!” Usnavi shouts, the words catching like a sob. “It’s Usnavi,ayúdame, abre la puerta, you have to—“

Kevin opens the door, hurriedly dropping a baseball bat to grab Usnavi by the arms as he practically falls into the apartment. 

“Usnavi, what—!” he starts.

“I can’t wake them up,” Usnavi gasps. “They were breathin’ all wrong and I can’t wake them up and they— Kevin, I don’t know what to _do_!”

Everything explodes instantly into chaos. Nina appears from nowhere to hand Kevin the spare keys to Usnavi’s place, Camila suddenly with them already dialling 911 on her cellphone while she tells Kevin to bring his cab around so they can follow the ambulance as soon as it comes.

“Ambulance?” Usnavi says, reeling a little. Why hadn’t he called one himself? He hadn’t thought, acted on impulse, had desperately needed someone else to share this with him as soon as possible. It’s December first and he woke up with the knowledge that the world was wrong before he even opened his eyes. He doesn’t know how he got the courage to open their bedroom door, with a screaming in his heart that said _get out of here,_ the ancient voice inside all living things that speaks of the fear to stand too close beside death.

No! They’re not dead. They were breathing. Stuttering, faintly, erratically, but they were breathing, no matter the strange gray-blue tint to their skin, no matter that Usnavi’s too fucking stupid to have got them to a hospital himself a week ago. No matter, because they’re _not_ dead.

Kevin grips his shoulder reassuringly. “We’ll be with you the whole time, Usnavi, it’s going to be okay. Nina, call Benny and tell him he’s in charge of dispatch today, I don’t have anyone else free.”

“What? But Benny’s got school, and he's never —“

“Nina, do as I _say_!” Kevin shouts, putting on his coat as he runs out the door. Camila’s right behind him, phone up to her ear while she talks to the 911 operator, and Usnavi goes to follow them when Nina steps in his way.

“Wait,” she says, leaning down to pick up a spare pair of Kevin’s shoes, lined up with the rest underneath the hooks for all their coats, and she holds them out to Usnavi. He stares in confusion for a moment, then realizes that he came round here without getting dressed, he’s barefoot and so cold he can barely feel his body. Is that important? He tries to push past her but she’s stronger than she looks, stopping him in place with her hand on his chest.

“Usnavi, please, it’s _snowing_.”

Fuck, this is wasting time! He takes the damn shoes to move things along, then his body locks up for no reason, frozen except for the trembling.

“The ambulance is on the way, the paramedics’ll know what to do” Nina says, her voice starting off soft and veering harshly towards curt halfway through like she doesn’t know how to make herself sound for this.

“They wouldn’t wake up,” Usnavi says. “I couldn’t wake them up.”  


***

It’s December first. This morning Usnavi woke to somthing that drained all sound out of the city and it stayed that way till the first step through hospital doors like he’s just tapped unmute. Overlapping beep and shout and murmur of machines and medics and patients, people’s shoes squeaking on the linoleum. More than sound, a world so busy he’s going to choke on all of it, the bright lights and the bleachy sanitized scent of the air and the bitterness of the vending machine coffee Camila bought for him while they sit in the waiting room. Too many things, too much to think about, it’s going to tear his head apart, he needs to be anywhere that isn’t here but he don’t dare even step outside for a breather in case he misses anything. Instead he tries to focus on his dad’s hat in his hand, which he’d grabbed on impulse on the way to follow the paramedics, resting it on his knee and walking his fingers up and down the light polyester stripes and the black that separates them like keys on a piano.

They won’t let him in to see his parents while they’re working on them. He doesn’t know what _working on them_ means in the specific and nobody will tell him anything.

“Can I see them yet?” he asks again at the nurses station anyway.

“I’m afraid not,” she says, with a detached sort of gentleness. “As soon as we know more, we’ll tell you. Just take a seat, please.”

Usnavi doesn’t want to sit back down, he doesn’t want to sit still, he wants to pace the hallways and smash all the too-bright lights and tear out all the too-loud machines until someone tells him something, until it forces something to happen. He bites down hard on his wrist till his eyes water, and then bites harder than that.

Nina gently tugs his hand down from his mouth and laces their fingers together.

“I’m sorry,” he says, and he doesn’t know why.

“Me too,” she answers, and he doesn’t know why.

A long while later, a doctor approaches them and Usnavi squeezes Nina’s hand tightly enough that it makes his fingers ache instantly, but he can’t loosen his grip. Nina doesn’t flinch.

“Are you here with the De la Vegas?” the doctor asks, and Usnavi forgets to answer so Camila says “yes”.

“We’ve run some tests,” the doctor says, to Camila not Usnavi. “Both Mateo and Rosa have a viral form of pnuemonia, which in _itself_ is not necessarily dangerous. But—“ he says, hurriedly like he doesn’t want to give them too much space to hope, “I’m afraid that it has progressed to the point that they’ve developed a severe secondary bacterial infection, which can often happen in vulnerable persons - that is, people with lowered or weakened immune systems, or those suffering from conditions like asthma, which—“

“Aite, but what does it mean?” Usnavi butts in. “Can you treat it? How long will they be sick for?”

The doctor sighs. “We’re doing everything we can, but at this advanced stage it’s hard to say anything for certain. If they survive the night we’ll be able to tell you more about the long-term prognosis.”

Camila covers her mouth with her hand, and Kevin mutters something under his breath. A solid steel box in Usnavi’s brain immediately slams down around the implication, refusing to let it germinate.

“… _If_?” Nina whispers. Usnavi drops her hand.

“We’ll know more by this evening,” the doctor says.

_“_ Can I sit with them?" Usnavi asks, for the hundredth time.

***

Paciencia y fe what Usnavi was raised on, but he’s never been good at the former and the latter is wavering. Usnavi’s waited and he’s prayed all day, and all he got for it was a doctor with a face full of grim pessimism and a mouth full of _if,_ and this dimly-lit room where his parents are all hooked up on needles and tubes.

“Hola,” he says. “Soy yo.”

Can they hear him? If he talks enough, will his voice find them wherever they’re wandering and remind them to come home? If they hear him, surely they’ll come back. He pulls the chair round to sit in between them.

“I brought your hat, Pai. S’weird seein’ you without it, been what, four years come Christmas? Did Mamá tell you she only got you it ‘cause she hated that old baseball cap you used to wear so much?” Usnavi taps lightly at the kangaroo logo on the back of the hat. “ _Girls look fly in Kan-gols_. Ain’t ever been so sure about you though, Pai, coupla scrawny little Dominicans like us can’t pull off the Sammy L Jackson steez.”

The light pattern in the room changes as Camila steps into the doorway. “Just checking in,” she says. “How are you, cariño?”

He ain’t gonna answer that.

“Do you want company?” she presses. He shakes his head. “Water? Something to eat? You’ve been here all day without anything.”

“Coffee would be great.”

“You need more than that, I’ll get you a candy bar from the vending machine,” she says. “ _And_ a coffee too, yes.”

“Gracias, Camila.”

“De nada.”

“Café con leche here sucks,” he informs his parents when she’s gone. “You’d hate it. Once you’re awake I’ll head out and get you a proper one, ain’t nobody deserve that taste in their mouth all day. I shoulda asked her to get me some gum.”

He glances over at Mamá, the plastic mask over her face, the faint artificial inhale-exhale of air being pumped into her lungs. It reminds him of his earliest baby pictures from when he was still in the NICU, tubes up his nose and wires on his tiny wrist. Was this what it was like for them when he showed up in the world before he was ready for it? Long days drinking hospital coffee, watching him breathe through a machine, living on an if.

_“_ That doctor don’t know what he’s talkin’ about,” Usnavi says. “Bet they said that kinda shit about me when I was a baby and I ended up fine, we always bounce back, ain’t we? Besides, we got a store to run, nobody got their coffee today, the whole barrio’s gonna fall apart if you don’t get better fast. And we’re s’posed to hit up Playa Rincón in the summer, we’ll still find the money somewhere. Sonny’s real excited to come with us this time, we can’t let him down. Don’t you wanna go back home, Mamá?”

The heart monitors beep asynchronous, two BPMs clashing in one song. It grates his ears to listen to.

“Come back,” he says, getting desperate. They haven't even  _moved_. They don't know he's here. “Come _on_ , what will it take? I know you’re tired, I’ll do anythin’. I’ll work both your shifts all day forever if I have to, I’ll quit school for it and work all night too. Or I’ll graduate ‘cause I know you want me to, and _then_ I can do the store full-time and, and you guys can have some time off, do that stuff you always said you’d retire on, ¿recuerdas? Goin’ to concerts and dressin’ up all fancy to go out for dinner and watch plays on Broadway, and we’re gonna win the lotto and then we’ll take Abuela and Sonny to Cuba and Puerto Rico and Mexico and Europe. And we need to go home, _please!"_

Some point during this he took to his feet pacing, took his volume up shouting, and a nurse leans in worriedly asking if he wants her to get his family. Who—? Oh, she means the Rosarios, still waiting outside. Usnavi shakes his head and sits back down. It's lonely in here, unheard, but it's private, it's De la Vega business.

“Please,” he says quietly as the nurse leaves again. “You told me you’d be okay, you can’t just say shit like that and then go back on it. You said you’d never break a promise to me again. You can’t only make promises about things what don’t matter, you can’t lie to me when it’s this important.”

Mama and Pai sleep on, dreaming in this place he can’t reach them, and Usnavi for maybe the first time in his life has nothing left to say.  


***

How he expected it to end is…he didn’t. Not really. Nobody ever does until they have no choice, but if he’d been pressed, if you’d asked him a few months ago when all of this would have been so unthinkable that it was easy to think about, he’d say that of course he’d be right there beside a hospital bed. Singular, never both, not both of them. The three of them together, though, always together, and always one last time to say a final word, like movie death scenes. A weak cough and fluttering eyelids and whoever's leaving saying…whatever, some wisdom to kickstart the next part for whoever’s still got story left to tell. _Look after the store_ or _be good_ or even just fuckin’ _remember to brush your teeth twice a day_. At the very least, the very most, _I love you_. Leave him with something. With _anything._

How it ends is this:

Usnavi, the middle pillar between two beds. Nobody wakes up. Doctors come in and out, and Kevin does too sometimes and Camila sometimes, but there’s long stretches when it’s only Usnavi. He can’t quite reach both beds at once, so he sits for a while direct centre, then eventually moves to hold his mamá’s hand, because Pai would want him to be with her if he couldn’t himself. She doesn’t wake up.

He stays motionless for an hour and then just before eight pm in the stillness, in the split second before the alarm, something leaves. Usnavi wouldn’t be able to explain how he knew and he doesn’t intend to ever try. He’s holding her hand, and then underneath his fingertips he can feel that she’s gone, and only after that comes the flatline.

The doctors do what they can. It’s not enough.

How it ends is:

Close to four AM, December second, though he’ll always think of it as December first, two thousand nine, the longest day he’ll ever know. Usnavi, slumped in his chair, sleeping with his head against his arm resting on his father’s bed. If he dreams, he doesn’t remember it later. What he remembers is the wake-up: he knows from only a few hours earlier that the flatline comes afterwards, and the alarm’s already sounding.

“Wait,” he says as people flood into the room and move him aside. “Wait, Pai, no, no, not yet, no!”

It can’t happen like this. Usnavi tries to push his way back to his father's side: he’s being irrational but he needs to be there, he needs to be closer, then Kevin is back, suddenly, holding him in the corner with his arms locked around Usnavi’s chest to keep him from getting in the way of the doctors working.

Like with Mamá, they try and try to bring him back. Like with Mamá, it’s too late. They call it at 4:03, and Usnavi collapses backwards, Kevin catching his weight. Right there in the room and Usnavi was still too late. He wasn’t even holding Pai’s hand. He wasn’t even _awake_.

And that’s the end. And nobody told Usnavi where to go next, or what he’s supposed to do now, or even that they love him. And all they left him with was the store.


	3. Chapter 3

Ain’t that Benny’s cut up over missing another day of school, but Usnavi didn’t answer any of his texts so he spent all yesterday on the dispatch with only Nina’s hurried call for explanation, and he’s gonna need a lot more than Kevin’s   _I need you to work the dispatch again today._

“How’s Mateo and Rosa?” he says, and gets no answer. “Mr Rosario?” 

“Dead,” Kevin says flatly. “Both of them. Last night.” 

“What?!” 

Kevin gives a limp shrug, rubbing at his temples. 

“  _Usnavi_ ,” Benny mutters, taking his headset off. “I gotta go.” 

“Camila and Claudia are with him,” Kevin says. “Benny, I know you’re worried but I’ve been awake all night and I don’t want to spend all morning calling around for someone to fill in. You’ve been saying for months you want more responsibility, take the chance when it’s given to you.” 

He’s right, and he sounds desperate, but what’s months compared to how long Benny’s been friends with Usnavi? It ain’t easy to drop the biggest opportunity he’s been given to prove himself, god knows Benny needs every chance and all the cash he can get, but it don’t seem like any of the choices here are gonna be easy so he’s gonna do what he always does and follow his first instinct. He’s always known that there’s some things about Usnavi that have meant Benny has to keep his eyes extra sharp, to make sure he can stay as Usnavi as possible without getting burned. Maybe all of that was a practice run for this. 

It occurs to Benny that, of all the people in the barrio, Kevin’s closest friend must have been Mateo. 

As respectfully as he can, Benny takes his tie off and puts it on the table. “Then fire me if you have to, man, I get it, but I ain’t stayin’ here directin’ traffic when my best friend’s just lost his parents.” 

He leaves the dispatch without waiting for a response. 

*** 

Vanessa always waits til last possible minute and then five more minutes after that to get out of bed and get ready for school, so she don’t walk with Nina any more because Nina likes to be punctual. Which is why it’s weird Nina’s at the door this late. 

“Usnavi’s mom and dad died,” she says in a tiny voice. 

Vanessa says, “what the hell are you talking about?” 

Not the response she means to give, but the one that comes out, even though she was texting with Nina all yesterday and knew they were at the hospital in a bad way. It’s just, it wasn’t even long ago Vanessa been in the store and Rosa had called her   _princesa_  and Mateo had tipped his cap to her. True, they’d sounded pretty sick even then and it’s been Usnavi at the counter every day the past few weeks. But like, everyone gets sick, they don’t just up and   _die_  a month later. 

“We stayed there all night,” Nina says. “Just got back home an hour ago.” 

“Is…is Usnavi okay?” Dumb question. 

Nina, still standing uncertainly at the door, starts crying, the silent sudden-tears-on-face kind. 

“Oh, hey, come on,” Vanessa says uncomfortably, bringing her into a hug. “Should you even go to school today, if you’ve been up all night?” 

“They’re only the same age as my mom and dad, Vanessa,” Nina says, and she’s not sobbing, she just sounds confused. “Mom said I could have the day off but I’ve gotta go to school ‘cause otherwise I’m gonna think about that and I don’t wanna. What am I even supposed to  _say_  to him now?” 

Vanessa doesn’t know either. What’re you meant to do, send a text,   _sorry you’re an orphan?_  She don’t even hang out with Usnavi at the moment, but even though they don’t all always spend every day together there’s a sense of permanency between the four of them, Vanessa and Nina and Usnavi and Benny. Something from the way they grew up together that stays outside the dramatic make-up-break-up and constant hierarchy changes of the high school social circle. 

Mateo and Rosa and the De la Vega bodega have always been permanent too. The store on the corner where everyone goes, part of the barrio’s foundation. And now they just ain’t there. 

Vanessa doesn’t say anything. But before she leaves for school, she does something she hasn’t done since middle school, and hugs her own mom goodbye. 

*** 

Dani can read the atmosphere of a neighborhood like a restaurant menu, and passing the bodega closed for a second day in a row gives her a chill down the spine like the falling snow that's drifting down in lazy flakes. 

“No store again today, huh?” Carla says. 

There’s no reason for this to be different to yesterday, but there’s some juju in the air that Dani doesn’t like at all, so once the salon’s set up ready she takes the opportunity before her first customer comes in to head over with the intention of checking in on the De la Vegas. She bumps into Camila coming out of their building. It only takes an glance exchanged. Dani’s good at reading people too. 

“Ha pasada algo,” Dani says. 

“Están muertos,” Camila says, and it’s not quite the shock it should be, but it hurts like hell to hear. “Both of them. We were there. And now I’m…going to work, supongo. Is…is that disrespectful?” 

“I don’t know about disrespectful, but it is  _crazy_ , you look like you’ve been awake for days.” 

“I have to do the payroll, I’ll get some sleep at lunchtime. If I don’t start it now there’ll only be more to do tomorrow. ” 

Isn’t that always the way? Always more to do tomorrow until there’s no tomorrows left, and the people left behind have to keep working even longer. Dani built her business alongside the Rosarios and the De la Vegas, all of them going through the same starting problems and stressful nights and days they thought it was all going to fall apart, and they all grew together and celebrated their successes together. Now Rosa and Mateo are dead, and Camila’s going to spend all day doing admin for the dispatch, and Dani’s going to spend all day cutting hair, and the bodega will stay closed for good. 

“Did you expect things to end like this?” she asks. 

“Call me naive, but I don’t think I expected things to end,” Camila answers. There the two of them stand in the snowy street, the truth echoing in the quiet around them. 

“It’s too cold out here,” Dani says. “We’ll…no sé, we’ll talk about this later, sí? Take care of yourself, linda, it’s something we could all stand to remember more often.” 

Back in the salon there’s music playing happier than it should be allowed, there’s a customer in the chair and two more waiting already, reading magazines but with a clear open ear for eavesdropping. 

“That was fast,” Carla says cheerfully. “Andrea was just telling me how there was ambulances right outside her building yesterday morning, real early before anyone was up. What do you think it was, Dani? I ain’t heard nothin’ from nobody else about it.” 

Nothing like the feeling of being the one to break unheard news. For once, Dani doesn’t want to be at the epicenter. 

“Carla, we need to talk when you’re done with this,” she says. “En privado.” 

*** 

Sonny’s trying to jump onto the kitchen counter so he can reach the peanut butter in the top cupboard when his mother’s half of her phone conversation in the living room catches his attention. 

“—en la cocina, do you want me to— sí, lo entiendo, I’ll tell him. Call us if you need anything, Miguel.” 

Is she talking to his dad? Weird. He loves both his parents but Sonny is their only common ground, so they prefer to relay only necessary information through him and otherwise intensely pretend the other one doesn’t exist. It’s the only reason their divorce stays as civilized as it is. Easy enough usually, with his dad being in DR, but that only makes it weirder that he’s calling at this time in the morning, and that he didn't ask for Sonny, and besides Sonny only spoke to him on Monday, that’s the day Pa always calls. 

Mom comes into the kitchen and just stands there, phone in hand, looking at him. 

“Was that Pa?” Sonny asks. 

“Sonny,” Mom says, and he can feel something bad in her voice. 

“¿Que pasó?” Sonny says. “Is he okay?” 

“Your dad is fine. He just got a call from the hospital. It’s…it’s about your Tío Mateo and Tía Rosa.” 

She tells him, about how his tío and tía who give him free candy and piggyback rides and who always make sure he gets the piece of the Rosca de reyes with the baby Jesus figurine are gone, and Sonny’s ten years old, he ain’t a kid who don’t know what dying is, except he never knew it could hit like a punch. He’s used to the idea that he can fix everything by trying hard and caring hard, but in an instant he knows there’s nothing he can do about this, and that’s the most frightening thing that’s happened since realizing he can’t fix his parents marriage either. 

He’s got questions like he always does about anything,   _how could something like this happen_ or  _ **why** _ _would something like this happen, why didn’t anyone stop it, what’s gonnastop it happening to anyone else?_ and usually he’d ask all those and more in a single breath. Today he only asks what seems to him the most important question out of all of them, and the scariest: “but what about Usnavi?” 

*** 

Claudia was the first to hear about it. Kevin called her as soon as they were home. 

She takes her rosary in hand, and she thinks of a sky full of stars. As it always seems to, her lord’s prayer fades into only the names of those she’s seeking divinity for. She often got scolded by her mama for failing to remember the exact words of the bible verses, but Claudia struggles to read and hasn’t got the mind for rote memorization. Besides, she’s always thought there must be no words more holy to speak to the Father with than love, and today with all the love and sadness her years have brought her, she passes bead past bead and thinks  _Rosa, Mateo, Usnavi._

There’s nothing more holy than love, her balm to the increasing wear of age and time and a long, difficult life. Nowhere does she find strength more than in the youngest generation who are the ones she truly considers   _hers_ , watching Nina flourish into a such brilliant young woman and Vanessa with her proud fierce inner strength, and Sonny with his bright and noisy sense of right and wrong, and even though Benny came along later Claudia’s taken so much joy in seeing him go from a roguish little troublemaker to such a smart and ambitious man. 

And Usnavi, with his father’s sweet smile and his mother’s music in his soul and all those little ways that are just himself. The De la Vegas came over to America on a warm September day, and Claudia met them just outside their building where she was feeding the birds from her stoop. The baby was kicking, and Rosa was so excited that she asked Claudia to feel before she even introduced herself, and told her how earlier that very day was the first time she felt him move while they were looking at the boats and reading the names aloud. 

When Usnavi first came home from the hospital in his carseat, Claudia was the first to hold him. He was small and  floppy like the ragdoll she still has carefully stored in a box, the only possession remaining of her childhood in Cuba beside a few old photographs. She’s been Abuela Claudia to the neighborhood long before any of the little ones were born, but it was meeting Usnavi that she realized she couldn’t regret this life that had prevented her from having children herself: it was only patience and a trust in God through all of it that lead her to this boy who was unquestionably her own, and all her babies afterwards. 

Claudia prays to her own Mama passed so many decades ago, asking her to help Mateo and Rosa find their path in the next life, and then she goes to do the same for her grandson left in this one. 


	4. Chapter 4

Crying ain’t even come close to what Usnavi wants to do. What else could bleed the feeling out he couldn’t say, only that nothing as vast as this could be expressed by something so small and human as tears. He doesn’t cry at the hospital while Camila and Kevin talk to doctors on his behalf, or when he gets back to his empty home, he doesn’t cry when he goes to the kitchen and instinctively pulls out the green, blue, red mugs that belong to Mamá, Pai, Usnavi and then stares at them til Camila takes him to sit down. Nina brings him his drink, and it tastes wrong. Nobody makes coffee like Mateo De la Vega, and there was a day sometime in the recent past that was the last time he’d ever make it for Usnavi, and Usnavi ain’t even sure when that was because he never thought it would be different enough from a lifetime of drinking Pai’s coffee to commit the specific instance to memory. Nobody makes it like Mateo De la Vega, nobody ever will again.

Usnavi throws his mug against the wall,and the shattering sound is hairline fractures around whatever numbness surrounded him: he’s crying so hard he thinks it might kill him and it still ain’t close to what he’s feeling, even when it seems the only thing keeping him from physically breaking apart under the force of it is Nina’s arms holding him, Camila’s hand on his knee. Abuela’s voice from the doorway is the only thing that eventually cuts through the loudness of heartbreak.

“Ay, Usnavi,” is all she says.

“Abuela, I broke my mug,” he sobs, which is a legitimately insane thing to say, only he’s had that mug since he was seven and first allowed to drink café and they bought all three of them as a set.

She makes quiet little shushing noises, helps him clean up his face, patting his tears away with a damp cloth. Usnavi closes his stinging eyes. His head hurts, everything hurts.

“Abuela,” he whispers. “What am I meant to do now?”

He doesn’t get an answer.

***

“Are you _sure_ you don’t want to sleep at our apartment tonight?”

Usnavi shakes his head. He’d rather be anywhere except here, but he feels like if he doesn’t bite the bullet and stay at his own place tonight he’ll never be able to get the courage up to step back inside the building again. 

“Es tu decisión,” Kevin says dubiously. “But Nina, you really should come home, you have school tomorrow. Benny can stay here with Usnavi.”

“ _I’m_ staying,” Nina says, folding her arms.

“There’s no use me arguing, is there?”

“No.”

Kevin sighs. “Pues, then I think Benny shouldn’t stay, perhaps.”

“What?!” Benny protests. “How come?”

“Because Nina needs to get some sleep,” Kevin says, “I don’t want her up all night talking.”

Yeah, ‘cause that’s really the reason. Usnavi don’t need to exchange a look with Benny and Nina to know they’re all thinking the same thing.

“Benny can sleep in Usnavi’s room,” Nina says, scowling at Kevin. “And Usnavi will sleep on the couch, and I’ll sleep on the floor.”

“No.”

“ _Dad—“_

_“_ Don’t worry about it,” Benny interjects. “Nina can stay, and I’ll just head home and come over in the mornin’ before I go school.”

“You shouldn’t have to leave.“

“Nina, it’s fine,” Benny says. “That cool with you, Mr Rosario?

Kevin nods, and when Benny’s headed to the door, he calls out, “Benny!”

“What’s up?”

“Do you think you can run dispatch solo again tomorrow? You did a good job the other day.”

Benny looks startled, then nods. “Yessir!”

“Good.” Kevin turns to pat Usnavi on the back as the door closes. “Do you have everything you need, yes? Okay. Come round straight away if there’s a problem. And Camila and I will both have our phones on. Look after each other.”

When he goes to kiss Nina’s cheek, she flings her arms around his neck and hugs him, for a lot longer than she usually would. Usnavi looks away, aching.

Five minutes after Kevin leaves, theres a knock on the kitchen window and Benny’s up the fire escape.

“Yo,” Usnavi says, opening the window. 

“Kevin gone?”

“Yeah, you’re good. Thanks for comin’ back.”

“Sorry about Dad,” Nina says. “I don’t know what he thinks is gonna happen. Like. Even if _that_ were, y’know, how we are, not really the time or place.”

“Right? I’m just glad he ain’t mad I ditched the dispatch today, I feel kinda bad leavin’ him to find cover.”

“You ditched work?” Usnavi says. “For me?”

“Duh. It’s fine, I still got a job. But maybe not if he finds out I come back here, so let’s hope I ain’t gettin’ chased out of town with a baseball bat come morning.”

He’s grateful for their company, he is, but suddenly Usnavi’s hit with the overwhelming pressure of a whole evening of being observed after a whole day he can’t even remember getting through, of the two elephants in the room that none of them know how to get round, the compulsion to _talk_ , or know that he’s still speaking volumes by not talking at all. He interrupts Benny halfway through to a sentence to say, “can we put a movie on or somethin’?”

“Sure. Whatcha wanna watch?”

“Iuno. Nothin’ heavy.”

“Disney?” Benny suggests, which is rare: they usually don’t go with Usnavi’s preferences, ‘cause Benny likes horror and Tarantino and all them long-ass classics like The Godfather and always teases Usnavi for his taste in kid’s movies and musicals, even though Benny secretly likes cartoons too. “We could watch…Lion King or—“

Nina grimaces and shakes her head. Usnavi watches the little news ticker passing through both their heads trying to come up with movies that don’t have any dead parents in.They end up watching Monsters Inc, Toy Story, something else, all crowded together under blankets on the sofa.  He wouldn’t have cared watching Lion King, Mufasa death scene or no. It ain’t like it’s real. It’s all just noise and color so he doesn’t have to make his own internal noise and color yet, because he don’t trust what shape that’ll take. He keeps nearly slipping into sleep then jerking fearfully awake. He doesn’t trust that, either.

Somewhere in the third movie they’re watching, when Usnavi’s too tired to even know what’s on the screen, Benny puts an arm round Usnavi’s shoulder, pulling him into a reclining position against him. Nina curls up with her head resting on Usnavi’s chest, and even though Usnavi doesn’t want to, he falls asleep there.

***

Wake up to the faint indent of the ridged couch fabric against his cheek, wake up to a migraine and something suffocatingly intangible pressing outward from the centre of his chest, wake up to a male and a female voice talking quietly, seriously, in the kitchen, and Usnavi’s suddenly back in early November when his mind was six levels deep in pneumonia confusion. He never thought he’d start the day with sound again.

“Oh, hey, you’re up,” Nina says to him, looking up as Usnavi catches his shoulder on the door in his hurry to get to the kitchen.

Reality check like a hammer to the skull. Usnavi ain’t sick any more, the headache’s a hysteria hangover, the pain in his chest just echoes in an empty space: it’s December third, and the two people in his kitchen are Benny and Nina. Nina’s in her pajamas, but Benny didn’t bring nothing round with him so he’s still wearing last night’s clothes, and they’re both eating dry cereal because the milk’s been gone bad for days and Usnavi kept forgetting to throw it out.

“…Oh,” he says, very quiet, very resigned. 

“You doin’ okay, man?” Benny asks. “Do you..uh, need anythin’, or, um, what—what do you wanna do today, I guess?”

Does Usnavi need anything? Not anything Benny or Nina can offer. He scratches his index finger down the doorframe, a flaking chip of paint digging in small and sharp underneath his nail. He ignores it.

“Usnavi? Did you hear me?”

He ignores that, too. God, he really did think for a second there that it was all a fever dream. Instantly and terribly Usnavi knows it won’t be the last time that happens. The future stretches out, two strange and tangled paths: the one where he has to wake up and relearn the truth again every day into an eternity, but also now he understands that obscured somewhere in that darkness is a brick wall, end of the line, and no way of telling if it’s tomorrow or fifty years from now. How does anyone carry on after learning what he’s learnt about the world? It’s nothing a person was meant to live with, not without losing their fuckin’ mind from it.

“Usnavi.”

What does he want to do today? Two paths into the future more immediate: being left alone, or having to spend the day surrounded by everyone except the two people he needs. Either option sucks.

“Should I go get Abuela?” Nina says. “¿Quieres Abuela? Or, or my mom, or—“

“I don’t _want_ Abuela,” Usnavi says. “I want—“

It don’t matter any more what he wants. He ain’t gonna get it. And it all ends up at the same brick wall, in the end.

***

What stage of grief does manic hospitality fall under, because that’s the one Usnavi’s living in right now. Even after Benny and Nina leave, for school or sleep or work, he didn’t listen which, Usnavi can’t escape from people. Word’s spreading, and everyone’s coming round to give condolences and flowers and empty reassurances, people who he’s glad to see and people who have no business being part of this. But he’s always been taught to be an open door, a welcoming presence, so he’s on automatic making drinks, trying to chat like today’s as normal as a bodega shift while everyone replies to him in whispers like they’re worried being any louder might make him keel over dead too from the shock of it. It’s tiring and infuriating and all he wants is for them to leave him alone, and then when they do the apartment is quicksand pulling him downwards and inwards to something enormous and terrifying he can’t name or understand, till he falls onto he next knock at the door with overenthusiastic gratitude for the reprieve and start the cycle again.

It might be the second or third or fourth day of this, Usnavi ain’t been keeping track, but when he answers this time it’s Camila with Usnavi’s tío Miguel, flown over from Santo Domingo.They hug, speaking _hola_ and _siento mucho_ and ¿ _estás bien?_ over each others voices.

“It’s good to see you again, Usnavi,” Miguel says.

“Been a while,” Usnavi says. “Prob’ly ain’t makin’ it to the island for a while now, you’ll have to hit the beach without me this time round.”

Miguel breaks the embrace to hold Usnavi by the shoulders and look him over. He shakes his head in disbelief. “You got so tall since summer.”

“Don’t lie to me right now, man,” Usnavi says, and they laugh, and hug again. He wishes Miguel woulda brought Sonny, even though when Sonny came over with Tía Marcela before he’d asked a million questions about how Usnavi was feeling and whether he was sad and does he want to come live with Sonny because they can get a bunk bed and he’ll even let Usnavi have the top bunk if he wants it. It was overwhelming, but a little less lonely to be reminded he ain’t the only one of them still standing, a little better to have family in the room.

Except for how he knows what Miguel’s here for. Usnavi don’t wanna face that yet. 

“¿Quieres café?” he says. His words sound like they’re vibrating, like when you talk into a fan when it’s got the blades spinning. “Or tea. Or, I dunno what else we got, OJ, water. Did you come straight from the airport, I—mierda, I was meant to come to meet you! Siento, forgot to check my phone, how was the flight, are you tired? Do you wanna like, take a nap or somethin’, you can sleep in my bed or, oh, ¿ya ha comido? ¿Qué hora es, is it past lunch?

“Café is fine,” Miguel says.

“I’ll make it,” Camila says.

“No, no, I’ll do it,” Usnavi insists.

“You two should really—”

“I can do it,” Usnavi says, running to the kitchen before she can disagree again. He ignores the blue and green mugs in the cupboard to pull out three of the mismatched guest mugs, faltering when he tries to pick one for himself because he’s always drank out his red mug but that’s so much smashed pottery now. There’s one with red stripes, that’ll have to do. He measures out the grounds, redoes it twice because he don’t think his spoonfuls were quite level enough. Pours too fast, that won’t taste right, tip it out and start all over. Do it perfect. It has to be perfect. This is all that matters right now.

He takes so long that finally they just come and sit in the kitchen with him. Miguel clears his throat awkwardly. 

Usnavi taps the spoon against the counter in a harsh unbalanced rhythm. “I got it, gimme one more minute, sólo será uno minuto. You sure you ain’t want something to eat? I don’t think we got no food in but I can run down to the store.”

“Usnavi, we need to talk about—” Miguel says. 

“What’s gonna happen to the store?” Usnavi asks, because at least that’s only the second most scary thing they have to discuss. “Do I have to get a lawyer, or somethin’? I ain’t know shit about no legal stuff. Who’s it even belong to now?”

“Everything will be in Miguel’s name until you turn eighteen next month,” Camila says. “It’s your store, though. That’s how they always wanted it.”

“But I just do the customer stuff and the heavy liftin’, I don’t know how to run the place,” Usnavi says. “Or how to like. Do anythin’, really. And we’re broke, Dios, there’s all the hospital bills and what about the apartment? I ain’t even know how to pay the rent or if we got enough or —“

“We don’t need to worry about those things yet,” Camila says. “You’re not going to be out on the streets. But we’re —“

“Anyone need a refill?”

Miguel sighs. “Usnavi, lo siento, this is hard for all of us but we can’t avoid it forever. I have to fly back home in a few days.”

Usnavi sits down, defeated. He can barely arrange the cupboard-size room he sleeps in on the best of days, and now he has to arrange a funeral. He has to arrange _two_ funerals.

“It’s gonna cost so much money,” he says. “I don’t know how to do it.”

“The money is my problem, not yours,” Miguel says. “I want to do this right. Please, help me do this right.”

He rubs his eyes tiredly and Usnavi feels bad for making this harder. Miguel is Pai’s only brother. Mamá doesn’t have any brothers or sisters, and Usnavi’s biological grandparents are all long dead. He knows that Pai and Miguel’s mamá died when they were very young, that they had to arrange the funeral for Usnavi’s abuelo not long after Mamá and Pai got married, a few months before Mamá got pregnant. And now here’s Usnavi and Miguel, just a coupla orphan De la Vegas sitting at a table wondering where it is they all keep disappearing to.

“They should go home,” Usnavi says. It’s the only thing he can think of. “They should be buried back home, that’s what they’d want.”

Miguel hesitates, and says “I…I think they’d want to be here.”

“It’s warmer at home,” Usnavi says. “In the winter. It don’t get so cold as over here.”

“They’d want to be near you,” Miguel says. “So you can visit. Mateo loved you so much, Usnavi. He’d want to be with you, they both would.”

Usnavi doesn’t argue. But he does wonder, if his parents care so much about being with him, why did they leave him behind like this?

***

Church is packed out with people who want to see Mamá and Pai off, and it’s reassuring some way to see how many that really is, some solidarity like the combined loss of all of them at once might equal out to how Usnavi’s feeling. People keep shaking Usnavi’s hand which seems weird to him. He nods blankly at their sympathy, the same i'm sorry lo siento condolences pésame he’s heard enough to turn to white noise, and keeps his head busy with a list of facts about each face.

Luisa. Second cousin on his Pai’s side. Taught Usnavi how to whistle on one of their trips to DR when he was six.

Joel Rosenthal. One of Kevin’s drivers. Takes his coffee black, likes it with two sugars but his doctor says he ain’t supposed to have sweets no more so he only gets sugar on Sundays.

Sra. Mendoza. Usnavi’s upstairs neighbor. One cream, no sugar, pinch of cinnamon and a packet of Marlboro Lights every Monday and Thursday with her lotto ticket.

When the service starts he takes his seat front row and doesn’t look ahead to where he knows his parents are, or at least what’s still here of them. There’s comfort he should be finding here, in these four walls where he learned to speak to God in song, with the priest’s voice talking in echoes off the high ceilings about finding peace and eternal rest. Usnavi wants to go home. Unfocuses his eyes, unfocuses his ears, recites coffee orders in his head till Abuela nudges him and murmurs, “mijito, it’s time.”

“Huh?”

She points up front. The eulogies. Usnavi’s supposed to start them off. He never actually got round to writing one, let alone two.

What stage of grief is stagefright? His hands are shaking. What a weird thing to happen, here and now, as if Usnavi ain’t usually right at home in centre spotlight, or as though anyone’s expecting fuckin’ Shakespeare, or as though falling over or forgetting his lines would even matter.

“I don’t know what to say,” he begins. “Which ain’t somethin’ I’m used to.”

He smiles at the murmur of solemn laughter. 

“Mamá—Mamá always said I learned that from Pai. The motormouth, I mean. I…There’s so much stuff I learned from them. It—I—they…man. I can’t do this. I can’t do this.” He’s tapping his fingers nervously against his leg. Everyone’s looking at him. He shoves his hands in his pockets. “I’m…you know I had to pick what songs I thought they’d want? I don’t know if I chose right. Uh, first one when we came in, that’s what they danced to at their wedding. I always see ‘em dance round the bodega to it when there ain’t no customers in. And then Rompiendo Fuente ‘cause Areito is the first album they bought when they came over here and Mamá always says it’s about us even though the baby in the song’s a girl. And when we’re leavin’ it’ll be Dream a Little Dream ‘cause they both love that one. Pai always tells everyone how that’s what I was conceived to…actually, maybe I shouldn’ta used it ‘cause that’s so gross and I always tell— _told_ him nobody wants Ella and Louis ruined like that. I’m sorry to everyone who knows that story. And I’m sorry to anyone who didn’t before who does now. And for talkin’ about _that_ in God’s house.”

More laughing. Their lives have always been an open book. He remembers his Mamá proudly telling anyone who came through the bodega that time when he came home with a B+ on his English paper, his Pai forever telling stories about the funny things he did as a kid while Usnavi melted from embarrassment in the background. For all the baby stories everyone in the damn barrio knows about him there must be a hundred more he never heard. And a hundred stories about Mamá and Pai being married back in DR before Usnavi came along, and thousand more before they met each other, and he’ll never know what it is he didn’t have time to know.

“That’s three songs. Only three, when I ain’t ever remember a time they wasn’t singin’. And now I’m s’posed to stand here and talk about two entire lives in five minutes, and I’m s’posed to celebrate who they were and make this speech about how they’d want us to carry on and be strong. And they really would, ‘cause that’s how they raised me. Things get tough but you learn from it, you turn to the people you love, you keep on goin’ till you’re back on solid ground. They worked hard to be happy. And that’s what they’d want us - what they’d want _me_ to do, only I gotta be honest, right now I don’t see how I can. I’m sorry I can’t give you nothin’ prettier, but I ain’t gonna lie to none of you here in church. They were my parents, and I loved them more than anythin’, and now they’re dead. I don’t know what words could make that seem like a lesson worth learnin’.”

There’s expectation in the crowd like they’re waiting for the plot twist, the stinger scene where he turns it around to something comforting. Usnavi holds both his hands out empty, _that’s all I got, folks_ , and goes back to his seat. He stays there through the other eulogies, all so much tidier than his own even though he’s the only one who wasn’t talking through tears, and he stays there when they’re supposed to all get up and view the bodies in a procession. He doesn’t get why anyone would want to. 

“Ain’t you gonna go up there, Usnavi?” someone asks him in the careful soft way people have been talking to him recently. Jaime Elvira. One cream, one sugar. Used to work at the dispatch, sells imitation designer bags and hats on 133rd now.

“No, thanks,” Usnavi says.

“You sure? I got a friend lost her dad ten years back, pretty messy so they done a closed casket, and she always says even ten years gone she still wishes she coulda had one more goodbye to his face. You shouldn’t miss your chance.”

Fuckin’ great, that’s exactly the kinda uplifting story you wanna hear at a double funeral. Usnavi slouches down further, plants his feet firmer on the floor. “Aquí estoy bien.” 

“She always says, you’ll regret it if—“

“Keep talkin’ and _you’re_ gonna regret it,” Usnavi snaps. 

Jaime holds his hands up, apologetic surrender. “Just wanted to—“

“Leave him alone!” Sonny says shrilly from behind Usnavi. He stands up on the pew to make himself eye level, paying no mind to his mom tugging at his arm. “If he don’t wanna he don’t gotta, and you ain’t barely know Tía Rosa and Tío Mateo at all, so it ain’t even none of your damn business so- so just shut up and go _away_!”

“Sonny, sientate,” Tía Marcela hisses.

Sonny sits back down, making an angry huffing noise under his breath. Usnavi bumps their elbows together in wordless gratitude, and feels less remorse than he should when Jaime shrugs uncomfortably and walks to the front. He was only tryna help, really. Hell, maybe he’s right, maybe Usnavi will regret this. On the other hand, though, maybe if Usnavi goes up there all he’ll ever remember of them after is their faces painted up by some morgue worker into a satire of vitality. No amount of make-up’s gonna fool him into thinking they’re only sleeping. Last chances for goodbyes are long gone already.

***

In the cemetery, the memory of his family now dust being consigned to the dust and with his life in ashes underneath his feet, Usnavi stands silent in the snow and doesn’t cry. 

The burial is over. It’s over. What next?

After he shrugs off the first few comforting hands that people keep putting on his shoulder it’s a general message received and they all keep their distance like he’s radiating a forcefield, except Sonny who’s been a little shadow stuck to his side since they walked to the church together this morning but Usnavi don’t mind that the way he minds everyone else being here. 

Earlier it was a comfort to see just how many folk wanted to pay respects to his parents, how important they were. Now it’s starting to feel like the whole world dragged their families out to parade what they still got in front of him. The Rosarios, talking quietly to Abuela. Sonny’s parents are there, standing next to each other for probably the first time in five years, Tía Marcela with her hand on Tío Miguel’s elbow. Benny and his mom are there, even Vanessa and _her_ mom. Mamá and Camila used to be friends with Naomí Garcíawhen Usnavi and Nina and Vanessa were all still babies, so maybe it makes sense she showed up for the sake of old times, but she’s got her arm linked through Vanessa’s and Usnavi can’t remember the last time he even saw the two of them interact at all, never mind with anything approaching tenderness. He’s always thought Vanessa must get lonely, walking through the world without her parents there to catch her falling.

Vanessa sees him looking over and meets his stare with her own, expressionless. Usnavi doesn’t look away, even as her eyebrows set sternly and she marches over to him. Ignoring the invisible bubble of empty space around him and ignoring Sonny, she grabs Usnavi in a tight and furious hug.

“ _Fuck_ this _,_ though _,”_ she mutters vehemently in his ear.

“¿Verdad?” he says, with a flat laugh. Her hair blows all around his face in the wind as she holds onto him, as he lets her hold onto him. He doesn’t cry.


	5. Chapter 5

Some kid in middle school once told him that if you dream about falling and don’t wake up before you hit the ground then you die, and Usnavi had lowkey freaked out about it every night for a month and a half after. Considering how much he falls over and/or off things in real life compared to everyone else he knows, he had figured he was probably way more likely to dream about falling too, and that meant he must be a high risk case. His solution at the time was to wedge himself up in the corner of his bed, surrounded by pillows and stuffed toys and his quilt built up like barricades, because if he fell asleep knowing there’s no physical way for him to fall off the bed then obviously the security would translate to dreams too.

More than a decade on and Usnavi wakes up in bed, swears that just a second ago he was so close to impact that he could feel gravel brush his skin. He walls himself in with pillows and the growing pile of increasingly dirty laundry that lives at the end of his bed and his now-cold hot water bottles, instinctively fortress-building, and goes back to sleep.

He wakes up, and wonders if they were dreaming about falling when it happened.

He wakes up with a weight next to him and reaches out to touch Pai’s arm where it’s resting on the hospital bed, brain coming unstuck for a second when he discovers it’s just a hot water bottle.

He lies in the dark and even in a room without windows through the paperthin walls he hears sirens. Hears telephones. Hears music from however far away. Distance merges it all to a faint continuous alarm.

He wakes up with a weight next to him, and he’s terrified to open his eyes, to reach out and find whatever his fingers just brushed against. There’s no sounds of life other than his own breathing, and he came to with the tactile memory of an ending held in his hand, so does that mean he’s lying here next to — he opens his eyes.

Nope, just the fuckin’ hot water bottle. He throws it to the end of the bed, then finds his iPod and shuffles indecisively through the first few seconds of every song he owns until he finally loses consciousness.

***

“Marcela will be here to pick up Sonny in an hour once she finishes work.” Tío Miguel checks his watch, and winces at the time. “Ay, I’m going to miss my flight, I wish I didn’t have to leave so soon.”

Usnavi makes a noncommittal sound. He wants Miguel to stay. God knows he wouldn’t have got anything at all done without him helping out, and he’s reluctant to lose proximity to family now that it’s something in scarce supply.

He also very much wants Miguel to leave so that he’ll stop asking Usnavi things like _when do you plan to go back to school_ and _have you thought about what to do with the store while you’re still at school_ and _don’t worry too much about it for now, just you focus on school._ Strong impression here that Miguel thinks Usnavi should finish high school. Usnavi has tried to imagine spending even one day back sitting in a classroom surrounded by other people his age and only came to the realization that, give or take a few weeks until he’s eighteen and it all passes to him official, he has an apartment. He has a business. He lives alone, he’ll have to be self-sufficient, he’ll have to be his own safety net.

Is he an adult now?

He breaks the hug, says, “Let me know when you land, yeah?” and then goes into the living room so that he doesn’t have to watch Sonny say goodbye to his dad.

A few minutes later, Sonny comes in alone and flops down on the couch next to Usnavi, looking sombre. “Thought he’d be here longer.”

“He’s already been off work a while,” Usnavi says. “I’m sure he woulda stayed longer if he could.”

“Lo se, it’s just been cool havin’ him around.” Sonny looks kinda embarrassed. “So…uh…Mom and Pa have been real nice to each other since he arrived and. I mean, like we all had breakfast together today and nobody even fought no-one, and I was thinkin’ maybe…”

Ah, shit.

“Hey…listen,“ Usnavi begins, with no idea how to continue this _sorry but your parents are definitely gonna stay divorced_ conversation sensitively.

“Aw, no, don’t gimme that _lissssten,”_ Sonny says, mimicking Usnavi’s soft intonation. “That’s exactly how Pa said it when I asked him to stay for Christmas.”

“Uh, you didn’t tell him why you was askin’, ¿no?”

“Nah. But should I of asked? You think if they had more time like that maybe they’d remember why they liked each other before? When they first got married?”

“Things don’t really work that way, Sonny,” Usnavi says, imagining Sonny and Marcela and Miguel sitting at breakfast, back together and happy. There’s a sensation in his heart like a guitar string snapping.

“Pero don’tcha think if—“

“I don’t think nothin’,” Usnavi says. “So drop the damn subject already.”

Sonny looks clearly half a second away from arguing, and then surprisingly holds back and just mutters “I really wanted him to stay, is all.”

As if it makes a difference, big picture terms. Usnavi has to bite his tongue so as not to say all the things building up on it, like: how the fuck would that be fair, for Usnavi’s unfixable home to be the glue that sticks all the broken edges of Sonny’s back together? Like, that eventually Sonny’s gonna have to grow up and realize that there’s gonna be a day when there ain’t even enough pieces left to put back together. Don’t Sonny know that wanting someone to stay ain’t enough to make it happen? He’s so naive.

 _Of course he is,_ Usnavi chides himself. _He’s just a kid. It’s **good** he don’t know any of this shit, that’s how it’s meant to be, or is draggin’ a ten year old into an existential crisis the only way you can think of to make yourself feel better? _ “Shit. I’m sorry, Sonny, I’m bein’ a jerk. I know it sucks he lives so far away. Miren, let’s just forget this conversation, I’ma walk you to Abuela’s and text your mom to pick you up there.”

“Are you mad at me?”

Usnavi sighs. “No, I ain’t mad, you didn’t do nothin’ wrong. But I’m bad company right now. You’ll be better off hangin’ with Abuela.”

“Oookay,” Sonny says, uncertainly. “You gonna stay at Abuela’s till Mom comes? You can have the good chair, if you want.”

The good chair is the one spot on Abuela’s couch where there’s no springs poking you in the ass the whole time you’re sitting on it. Couch shotgun is a vicious custody battle every time they’re both at Abuela’s: Sonny almost always manages to _but I’m the baby_ his way to victory, and only ever gives the seat up for Nina. It’s a big gesture for him to offer it to Usnavi.

“Estoy bien, you keep your chair,” Usnavi says. The aftertaste of resentment is still a bile-tasting reflux in his throat, ready to come back any second: maybe he just doesn’t want Miguel and Marcela to patch things up no matter that it'd make Sonny happy, because Usnavi would be too jealous to ever go round there again if they did. Some cousin he is. “I don’t think you’d want me to stay.”

***

He wakes up coughing out imaginary grave dirt and when he flings his arms out in terror and hits two walls Usnavi’s tired brain doesn’t quite register that people aren’t usually buried with additional flailing space, he just registers _small_ and _dark_ and the conclusion of a nightmare rolling through to life until he fumbles the light on to see that it’s just his room. Tiny enough for him to touch both opposite walls at once, not enough floor space for him to stand without being in a different room. Not so tiny as a coffin. It’s just where he’s slept his whole life, and he was just sleeping, and that’s all.

“Fuck _me_ ,” he mutters to himself, lying back down.

The possibility of worse hadn’t occurred to him for a single second when he was sick but in retrospect it’s hard to wrap his head around the fact that, at the start, they all had the same thing. Of course it makes sense, really: Usnavi’s younger and healthier than his parents were, he got proper treatment early. It makes sense, except that now Usnavi’s the only one of them still walking around overground and tonight he woke up with the phantom feeling of splintered wood under his scratching fingernails, and lying here the six stories of apartments above him is six feet of dirt pressing down every time he closes his eyes even for the length of a blink.

He needs to go outside. It’s a bad time of night for walking, it’s a bad time of year for it, but it’s better than a burial and Usnavi needs to go around the block and clear his head, and when the block isn’t big enough for that he widens the radius, widens it again on every pass by his building until some circles later he bumps into Carla of all people, approaching from the opposite direction.

“Usnavi?” she says, stopping in her tracks.

“Carla? What the hell are you doin’ walkin’ around on your own at this time?”

“¿Qué quires decir? I’m goin’ to work.

“…¿Qué? What time is it?”

“It’s a quarter to seven,” says Dani, looming suddenly behind him like a dracula with a belt full of hairdressing equipment. Usnavi takes a second to readjust to being in real life daytime world and figures out a) they’re just outside the salon, b) it’s still dark out, but dark in the fading way of imminent morning and c) obviously it’s a quarter to seven because the grate over the salon door is open while the one over the window is still pulled down, and there’s lights on in the dispatch too, but only faintly, in the back. He shoulda noticed that. “Carla. You brought me an Usnavi.”

“¡Hola, Dani!” Carla says. She pinches Usnavi’s cheek. “I sure did. He could use a bit of fixin’ up but he ain’t too shabby, is he?”

“I don’t know about that.” Dani eyes Usnavi over. “Go inside and start setting up, Carla, por favor.”

Carla disappears and Usnavi lingers awkwardly with the impression that Dani is about to harangue him for something, but all she says is “lindo, why are you out at this hour?”

“It ain’t that early, if I had a mornin’ shift I’d already be at work. I just went for a walk.”

“Mmhm. And how long have you been out here, _walking?”_

“Iuno,” he says. Dani has a terrifying way of barely twitching her expression and managing to speak volumes with it, so he tries to appease the minuscule shift at the corner of her eyes by adding “not long, probably?” because he really doesn’t know but it can’t be more than a couple hours.

“Mmhm,” she says again, then grabs his hand and physically drags him inside the salon. Usnavi finds himself sitting down in the tiny break room at the back so suddenly that he can’t tell if he blacked out for a moment. Or maybe Dani just has that effect. Could go either way.

Dani clatters what sounds like seventy spoons and mugs around. The microwave hums. Usnavi waits in bewildered silence, wrapped in an old multicolored blanket that was lying over the back of the couch. For a million dollars he wouldn’t be able to say for sure if he put the blanket on himself or if Dani did. Maybe he’s been up longer than he thought.

Dani crouches down to level with Usnavi’s sitting height, looks him compassionately in the eyes and says, “te ves terrible.”

“You just called me _lindo_ outside, don’t tell me I got my hopes up for nothin’.”

Dani makes no attempt to laugh politely. Fair enough. “Lo digo en serio. You are going to drink this -“ she hands him a mug, wrapping his fingers round the handle like she doesn’t trust him to do it himself “— and then you are going to lie on this couch and get some sleep until you look less like a…raccoon. Dark circles are never in, chiquito.”

Usnavi catches the hesitation on the last-second word-switch, and wonders whether she was gonna go with _corpse_ or _ghost,_ and which one would be most fitting.

“I have to get to work.” Dani squeezes his knee through the blanket and stands. As she nears the door she reaches for the light switch, saying “Let me get the—“

“No!” Usnavi says, and she startles at his loudness. “Uh. It’s fine, you can leave ‘em for now, I’ll turn ‘em off once I finish my drink.”

Dani taps her nails loudly against the plastic switch casing and then nods and leaves him to it.

He sips his drink. It mostly tastes like hot, burning the tip of his tongue, but there’s a hint of chocolate under that. Powdered packet stuff and microwave-nuked milk, nothing fancy. Usnavi’s just glad it isn’t coffee.

***

Dani must have told someone about finding Usnavi wandering the streets in the early morning like a roaming zombie because suddenly everyone’s reiterating their invitations for him to come stay with them for a while, and telling him he looks tired as if he didn’t know that already. He doesn’t take any of them up on the offer: he’s going out every night now, late enough that nobody will still be out to catch him, early enough that he’s back before people start going to work.

There’s no reason to keep it secret. It’s not like he’s out with a dangerous crowd or doing anything stupid. All he’s doing is walking, four or five hours every night. Maybe 3AM in the hood ain’t the safest time but he doesn’t take any valuables with him, only his old walkman from the late 90’s that nobody’s gonna steal, and his wallet emptied of cards with a little bit of money just in case because nothing’s gonna make the guy robbing you madder than not having anything to give him - ten dollar mugging insurance, Pai used to call it. Nobody’s bothered him so far. Still, Abuela was upset enough after hearing about just one night, and Usnavi doesn’t want her to find out that it’s a recurring thing.

He also doesn’t want anyone to know that when he does eventually come back and go to bed, he’s had to start sleeping with the lights on. So in all it’s just easier for him to be on his own at night, but he still gets asked by someone at least once a day.

Today, it’s Nina, who seems just as tired of asking as Usnavi is of being asked, because she says “Mom says to tell you you should stay with us in case you changed your mind from six hours ago. Did you?”

“Nah,” Usnavi says, “thanks, though,” and then they sit in silence for almost five full minutes. Usually Usnavi would be the one restless and bored and trying to find something to say, but he just stays still and watches Nina tuck her hair behind her ears five times and check her phone four times and inhale like she’s about to speak but not quite follow through on it eight times.

“Are you uncomfortable ‘round me now?” he asks, blunt.

Nina snaps her fingers loosely down by her side three times, and grimaces. “Un poco,” she says. “I don’t really know what to say, I guess.”

He nods. “Wanna talk about the weather?”

“It’s cold.”

“Sure is.”

Nina laughs and says, “well, that was dumb. Hey, uh, do you know what you're gonna be doing for Christmas?”

Oh, shit, that’s very soon, ain’t it? “Not been top of my agenda, to be honest.”

“You should come to ours.”

“You just said you’re uncomfortable round me.”

“Yeah, so what, we’re gonna just stop talking forever? I don’t know the right way to act about it and I keep overthinking. That’s my problem. Don’t spend the holidays by yourself.”

Usnavi shrugs. “I don’t wanna be the Ghost of Christmas Bummer in the corner ruining everyone’s fun.”

“You won’t.” At Usnavi’s skeptical look she clarifies, “let’s be real, no-one’s gonna have fun anyway. It doesn’t seem right. Dad got all the office decorations out the other day and then just put the box away again without opening it.”

“There ain’t any decorations up in the salon either. And usually Carla’s on that as soon as possible.”

“We’re supposed to put the tree up in the apartment this weekend and I think Dad’s only doing it for my sake and I wanna tell him to just not,” Nina says. “I don’t know why anyone’s bothering this year. Nobody’s in the mood.”

Usnavi wonders how true that is. He doesn’t doubt that everyone’s grieving, it hangs in the air like intangible soundproofing, but it had surprised him so much to see Dani and Carla opening the salon the other day: he’d forgotten people don’t just disappear into waiting static in between checking up on him. How much of the quiet is the gap two deaths of two central people in the community have made, and how much of it is a temporary lull that settles over people whenever Usnavi walks past, trailing suspended animation around with him while people wait for him to leave so they can get on with their lives without seeming disrespectful. Even if the Rosarios did skip Christmas this year, they’d be back on track for New Year, or Dia de los Reyes, or the Fourth of July, or whenever. The neighborhood is on pause. Usnavi got the stop button.

“I don’t really wanna be watchin’ someone else’s family Christmas either,” he says quietly.

“I know. But you’re our family too, Usnavi,” Nina says. “You know you’re my favorite little brother.”

“Do I gotta remind you _again_ I’m a year older than you?”

“Am I wrong?”

“Nina Rosario ain’t ever wrong,” he says. “I appreciate the offer. I just wanna be at home.”

***

Usnavi just wants to be at home, and he means that he wants his apartment to be home again, he wants a home to go back to again. On his nightly circuit round the block he thinks about Nina, who is the best younger big sister he ever had, and he thinks about the solid triangle between the bodega and the salon and the dispatch while other businesses pop up and inevitably fail around them, and all three of them left undecorated with five days left till Christmas.

On the next pass by his building he finds himself at the back entrance of the bodega, opening the door. There’s something post-apocalyptic about the inside: the stark lights, the window covered by the grate, the sound of a couple of rats scuttling away as he flips the lights on, their run across this treasure-trove of undefended snacks suddenly interrupted.

It tastes like decay in the air. He never cleared the little sandwich counter or the trash can or the produce shelf. There’s milk he forgot to put back in the fridge, the cardboard carton swelling and leaking at the seams. Usnavi hasn’t been in here since the last day of November, when he told Abuela that he’d get his parents to a doctor the next day.

Anyone else would have known so much sooner than that.

He jumps up on the counter, disturbing the thin layer of dust to sit facing backwards towards the wall where they keep the dirty magazines and the cigarettes and all the other ask-at-the-counter stuff.

Is it kinda strange he’s been selling that stuff to people for years even though he’s still got a few weeks before he’d be allowed to buy them for himself? Usnavi remembers getting The Talk at age fourteen, how he’d been sitting on the floor watching TV in the living room and Mamá had come in after putting his clean laundry on his bed and said, “mijo, you _know_ we have a rule that you pay for anything you take from the store out of your wages unless it’s food”. Usnavi had said “huh?” and then “oh god, _no”_ on realizing he’d been late for school that day, and had forgot to shove the recently and unlawfully acquired reading material for his favorite morning wake-up routine back to the bottom of the box of more innocent comics under his bed before he left. He’d begged her not to tell his dad, not so much out of fear of getting in trouble as the horrifying knowledge that it would mean a Conversation was going to happen and that Pai has always taken so much joy in embarrassing Usnavi right out of his skin.

“Of course I’m telling him, he’ll need to make sure you're getting the right kind of information,” Mamá had said.

“Mamá, please! I’m too young for my life to be ruined like this.”

“You have to know about these things, and not from those sucias revistas. I want you to be safe.”

“I’m not—it’s—I’m fourteen! I ain’t gettin’ no girls pregnant, I ain’t even datin’! And we already done sex ed at school, recuerdas, you had to sign the form.”

“I know, but there’s things they don’t teach you. Life can be complicated, Usnavi. It’s our job to make sure you’re prepared for anything.” Then she’d smiled at his anguished look and said, “anyway, what kind of parent would I be to let you get away with stealing from your job without any consequences, hm? Don’t do it again.”

Life can be complicated: through the dedication of both his parents Usnavi was theoretically, if not quite emotionally, prepared for dating and sex and love and consent and graduation and work and institutional racism and cooking and a million small necessities of growing up. Usnavi was never prepared for sitting in his bodega with only a bunch of overconfident rats and moldy bread for company staring at the colorful rows of cigarettes at four in the morning.

He grabs a pack and a lighter off the shelf, leaves the grocery mausoleum that is the store dark and locked behind him and takes to the fire escape.

There was one more time after the magazine incident that Usnavi stole from work. His parents never found out about that one: in the summer after Usnavi turned sixteen, hanging out in Benny's room, Benny had turned to him and whispered “hey, my cousin gave me this when he came to town, check it,” and showed him a very tiny plastic baggie filled with a few very small green buds.

“Oh my god,” Usnavi had whispered back. Nobody was there to overhear them, so it wasn’t actually necessary to whisper, but the drama of secrecy deserved to be respected. “You gonna try it?”

“I dunno,” Benny said. “Maybe? If you wanna too? I don’t wanna do it on my own.”

“Yeah, okay,” Usnavi said, because alcohol had never really interested him and he ain’t big into the idea of drugs, but weed ain’t _really_ drugs, and Benny already had it, and Usnavi’s never done anything cool in his life so maybe this will be the thing. “What do we do with it?”

“We need tobacco so’s I can make a joint, ain’t enough there for a blunt,” Benny had said, with that confident I Know What I’m Talking About voice he uses when he doesn’t really know what he’s talking about. “Do you think you can get some from the store?”

“Sure,” Usnavi had said, with equally unearned confidence, ignoring the instant trepidation because he doesn't want to seem like a chicken. Next time he was alone in the store, he’d quickly swiped the first packet his hand touched into his pocket, with his heart racing and his stomach full of guilt, and him and Benny had got high for the first time together with a badly-rolled joint from the paper and dry, crispy tobacco from the cigarettes that night. And Usnavi discovered that there was, in fact, something that could made his racing thoughts and anxious hands and restless legs feel calm, which  he thought about a lot afterwards.

He thinks about it now, lighting up a cigarette on the fire escape, wishing like hell it was cut with a little something to take the edge off. It’s not the first time he’s done this, either: Usnavi, age sixteen and restless and permanently sweaty and stressed and horny and sleepless and ecstatic and in desperate need of mellowing out but too scared of getting in trouble to go looking for someone to hook him up, trying to recreate a high with only half the necessary materials.

Being caught with stolen softcore porn was one of the most embarrassing moments of his life. His parents found it hilarious. Being caught with cigarettes, stolen or otherwise, would have left his Mamá heartbroken and his Pai disappointed. They would have asked him why he had them, and why he didn’t listen to all their warnings about smoking being the thing that killed Mama’s father, long before Usnavi was born. Usnavi wouldn’t have been able to explain. He told his parents almost everything, but he didn’t tell them about the intolerable claustrophobia that sometimes came over him just from existing, in the late hours when he was left alone with his hormones and the electricity under his skin and the knowledge there’s something about him that doesn’t work the same as everyone else which he doesn’t let himself name but which sometimes aches to be recognized, and memories of rejections from girls and the fact he was still only five foot four and can’t grow a beard yet and the weight of what a future might be for a kid who knows he’s never gonna get into college and has no real talent other than coffee.

So he didn’t tell them how he had smoked a joint and for once felt like he knew exactly who he was and where he was going, or at least that it was fine and endlessly funny if he didn’t know either of those things. Or that one night a few weeks later he crept out onto the fire escape to smoke one of his leftover cigarettes. They tasted too harsh without the weed, they didn’t make him feel mellow, they made his head buzz and left him feeling faintly stained and stuffy, and the whole time he was tensely expecting his parents to wake up and catch him. It wasn’t a chill experience, but for some reason it still helped. Maybe the association with being high. Maybe because he knew that if anyone were to pick someone they thought was a secret underage smoker they wouldn’t pick Usnavi and there was something exciting about that. Maybe just that every time he did it over the next few weeks he had fewer stolen cigarettes until finally they were gone and could finally stop weighing on his mind with the fear of getting caught and the shame of knowing he was doing something wrong.

He thought about taking another pack, sometimes, but never did until now when it doesn’t count as stealing any more because it’s his store, so there’s nothing to feel guilty about other than everything else in his life.

As soon as he finishes the first, he lights up a second, coughing. Chainsmoking, great choice a month after recovering from pneumonia but who’s gonna stop him? There’s nobody here to stop him. He survived and they didn’t, and it makes sense except for how it should never have happened, except for how he coulda stopped it happening if he called an ambulance a week earlier. A night earlier. The few minutes it took him to run to the Rosarios and have them call one instead. How much did he miss the cutoff by?

He’s so stupid. He’s so unbelievably _fucking_ stupid.

Usnavi stays out on the fire escape, lighting new cigarettes off the cherry stubs of the previous ones once they get close to filter, and it’s only once his lungs burn as much as they did when he was sick that he feels like he’s allowed to go inside and sleep off the nicotine nausea under the brightness of his overhead light.


	6. Chapter 6

Pick any holiday out of a hat and Usnavi’s always loved it. New Year’s, Three King’s, Fourth of July. Any excuse for a big party, a big dinner, music and decorations and celebrations, that’s his _shit_. Christmas is an expensive time of year, especially with Usnavi’s birthday so soon after, so it ain't always the most extravagant out there but he’s always adored it just as much as all the others even when they’re pinching the pennies. 

L ast year his parents gave him their old record player, with a few records bought second-hand. It still occupied the same space in the living room it always had before, and they all still used it the same as ever, but the point was that after that it was officially Usnavi’s. It’s never mattered what he gets, year on year of fell-off-a-truck technology and scuffed-up Goodwill toys and dollar store candy. What matters is that it’s _his_ , that he knows what belongs to him and where he belongs, playing all of the new records one after the other, dancing and dancing through the afternoon with Mamá and Abuela in the refractions of the colorful lights draped on their artificial tree.

The decorations are boxed up in the closet in his parents room. Even if he wanted the tree he won’t step foot in the door. Usnavi doesn’t really know what anyone’s doing this year, only that he’s been asked to spend the day by everyone he knows and rejected every invite.

Abuela comes round on Christmas Eve, while Usnavi’s lying on the couch listening to old movie musical soundtracks on lightly-scratched vinyl. “You’re spending tomorrow with me, sí?” she says, a question that seems more like an instruction, though he knows he ain’t gonna take the offer up. He can’t bring himself to give Abuela an outright no, but Usnavi doesn’t intend to ever celebrate Christmas again.

***

It’s a quarter to three in the morning, December twenty-fifth, the space between too late and too early where Usnavi’s always trapped. Nobody crashing on his couch tonight. His parents room next door echoing untouched is a lack of sound so loud it drives him outside to escape it, another night alone. Nobody in the stairwell, nobody in the store. Outside the city’s as dead as it ever gets, the lingering lights of the sleepless and the shift workers and the late-night straggling partiers struggling home with their buzz fading in the early hours. Their paths intersect but don’t intercept: Usnavi walking widening concentric circles with his headphones in, so tired he can’t feel tired any more. There’s nobody in his apartment, and this is almost like sleep, a walking meditation through the liminal hours of life.

He’s not paying as much attention as he should to what’s around him, near on walking into a guy who’s come up right in front of making an exaggerated _headphones out?_ motion pointing at his ears. 

Usnavi sighs, takes one headphone out. He's lived in the hood long enough he knows how this goes. “Lemme guess, you need cab fare?” 

“Lost my job last week,” the guy says, apologetic. “I only need just enough for the night, gotta get back home and maybe somethin’ to eat, you know how it is, anythin’ you can spare.”

“Sure.” Like this is really a dude out for groceries at this time, but what does Usnavi care so long as he ain’t ending up with a knife in the gut.

“Thanks, buddy,” the guy says, as Usnavi reaches into his pocket. “Slow, don’t be tryin’ no Batman shit.”

Yeah, right. Usnavi ain’t the Bruce Wayne kind of orphan. He’s the kind who takes his wallet out and tosses the whole thing over without question, because the guy might have his hands empty now but that don’t mean things won’t break bad. It’s no loss. He don’t carry much on him at night.

“Ten dollars? That’s it? C’mon, I got kids at home,” the dude says. “Gimme your phone.”

Usnavi shrugs. It’s a 2005 brick. His wallet’s probably worth more even without the money in it. He holds it out and the guy makes a derisive sound, though he still takes it.

“Don’t bullshit me with a burner, kid, I seen you listening to music, hand it over.”

“Only phone I got, tunes on the walkman, see?”

“A _walkman_?! Man, it’s nearly 2010, the fuck’s wrong with you?”

“I got some good mixtapes.”

“You got some— fuck me, the people in this goddamn town,” the guy says, then, absurdly, “yeah, fine, piss off then, happy holidays.”

“Aite,” Usnavi says, with a surprised cough of laughter. “Feliz fuckin’ Navidad, I guess.”

***

Christmas day starts with a knock at the front door, and continues to knock even when Usnavi pulls the pillow over his head to block out the sound.  The knocking gets more urgent as he ignores it until he has to sit up, biting his lip indecisively. Today ain’t happening and nobody’s gonna drag him into it, but what if that's not why they’re here, what if its an emergency and he sleeps through and misses it again?

The door tries to open and catches on the chain. “Usnavi?” Abuela calls out, that waver in her voice that always stresses Usnavi out because he never wants to upset her, and that makes the decision for him. He runs to the door to let her in.

“Ay, bendito, so you are here!" she says, taking his hands with a tight grip. “I tried to call for the last hour and it wouldn’t connect, I was getting so _worried_.”

“I, uh, I lost my phone,” he says. Well, what else is he gonna tell her?  _Don’t worry, Abuela, I just got sorta mugged at three AM, no big deal._ It really doesn’t feel like a big deal, Usnavi’s got bigger fish to fry, but it definitely would to Abuela. 

She fans a hand in front of her face as he takes her arm to bring her to the living room. “You frightened me. I didn’t know where you were.”

It’s not like it’s the first time she’s called round and missed him. But, he realises with guilt, Abuela always spends Christmas with them.. She has plenty of other places to go - the Rosarios, Dani, any number of her friends all through the barrio - but then, so does Usnavi, and none of them were the one he wanted. She loved his parents too, like they were her own children, like they were all flesh and blood. There's so much to be afraid of in an unanswered phone call.

“Lo siento, Abuela,” Usnavi says, and means it in a thousand ways. “So. It’s Christmas, huh?”

She squeezes his hand, and says “it is. What do you want to do today? Camila said that she can make space for us, if you want?”

“I don’t wanna do anythin’.”

“You can’t just sit here in the dark all day,” she says, indicating the closed blinds. “Would you…would it make you feel better if we go to see them, perhaps?”

“Camila doesn’t—“

“I meant your parents.  We could go to the cemetery, and—”

“ _No_ ,” Usnavi says, instant and urgent. Tío Miguel said they’d want to be close so that he can visit. It was a wasted effort so far: he hasn’t, he can’t. There's a lump in his throat and he can’t explain, she’ll think he’s losing it if he tells her about all those dreams of the pallor of their faces and the blueness of their barely-breathing lips when he’d found them in the morning, the dreams about a third gravestone with his own name and the dark closing over him, visceral intrusive images of the terrifying biology of decay when he closes his eyes. He’s scared, is what he is, plain and simple, and it'll make him sound insane to say why. “No, Abuela, I-I don’t wanna go to the cemetery, no.”

She gives him a searching look and says, “then what about church? It will do you good to get out of this apartment.”

“I don’t know if church will help either. It…I ain’t felt like God’s been on my side much, recently.”

“Lo entiendo,” she says, gently. “But the times when you doubt Him are usually the times you need Him the most, mijito.”

***  
One room can be so many places. The church, humble and ostentatiousboth in one, holds a thousand different places in a single room of pews and altars. It’s been towering and foreboding like sitting in the principal’s office or his old special ed room the times he’s had to do confession; his parents weren’t too strict on that so it meant he must have really messed up whenever he ended up there. Squirming in his Sunday best through the boring parts of weddings, waiting for the bit where everyone cheers and throws confetti, the flowers and colors turning it into a room like summertime no matter the weather. A cold cavernous emptiness like floating in outer space at the funeral. They come here every year on this day since Usnavi can remember, and Christmas mass holds some of his favorite versions of the room: the joyful echoing songs, the security of faith, the orange glow inside and out like a warm light through even the bleakest parts of winter.

This year is different. The warmth is still here, but Usnavi’s struggling to feel it in himself even he feels it all around himself, watching it with his nose pressed to the glass like the little match girl. Broke and hungry clinging onto vicarious heat before dying alone in the snow, now _that’s_ an accurate Christmas story, ain’t it? More so than guiding stars and God's mercy. Still, there’s an echo in the songs that isn’t joy any more but at least a memory of it, at least the proximity to it through a window. He doesn't join in with the carols, he doesn't cry even as the song presses hard on a painful place in his heart. It sounds like Mamá and Pai. He misses their music. His prayers feel empty: they weren't answered before and what's left to pray for, but he looks to the ground and mouths along when the congregation bow their heads anyway.

After the service, every year since Usnavi can remember, Abuela always lights a single candle at the altar, and no different this year. She stands, the rosary in her hand and the sad, sweet smile at the flame she just set down, the barely audible “Feliz Navidad, Mama” and the prayer.

Usnavi murmurs the amen with her and then asks, “did this help? When you first lost her, did it make it easier?”

"Not at first,” Abuela says.

“But it did later?” They can both hear the desperation in his voice.

“Paciencia y fe, mijo, these things will take time.”

“What if I don’t got time?" he asks, because time is a rug that can be pulled out from under him any second and besides, he can’t imagine not feeling this way forever, for however long he's got. Abuela just looks at him, filled with sadness, then she takes a second candle and lights it from the first.

Usnavi drops some change in the donation box, picks up the matches to light two of his own candles. They sit side by side in the company of the flames of all the others lost and others hopeful. He hopes they’re happy together, wonders whether it’s as hard for them to be so far away from him as it is for him to be apart from them. He hopes wherever they are burns bright like Dominican sunshine, in the company of all the other lights around them even though the days are dark down here.  


***

It’s a scene familiar in all the worst ways, wind so cold it's like being stabbed in the chest on every inhale, begging for someone to please hear him and open the door, it’s urgent, it’s desperate. Usnavi’s even still in his pajamas. At least this time he remembered to put shoes and a coat on.

“Is Sonny here?” he asks frantically, as soon as Tía Marcela opens the door. “Is he okay?”

“¿Que? Usnavi, it’s the middle of the night, I have work tomorrow,” Marcela says. She’s in pajamas too, her long hair wrapped up in a headscarf. “Sonny’s fine, he’s been asleep for hours. ¿Qué pasa?”

“I—“ he cringes under a wave of agonized embarrassment that drowns out the panic. “I, um, had a dream that, that he was—I had a bad dream.“

Marcela’s sleepy frown softens, and she sighs. “Come on, then, you’re letting the cold in.”

Usnavi only comes in far enough to close the door behind him, feeling like an intruder. He likes Marcela well enough, but they ain’t exactly at _comforting hugs after a nightmare_ level of closeness. “I’m sorry I woke you up.”

“De acuerdo. You could have called instead of running over here.”

“We ain’t had the landline for months and my cell got stole —“

“It got _stolen_? What happened?”

“Never mind,” Usnavi backtracks. “It don’t matter. I’m sorry. I just…had to check he was okay. It’s dumb. Lo siento. I’ll go.”

“Usnavi,” she says, “stop apologizing. I know how much you care about him. And I’m not having you walking back home in this state, but I really have to get back to sleep. You can stay in Sonny’s room. Don’t wake him up, he’ll be bouncing off the walls all night if he finds out you’re here.”

Does she sound a little bitter about that? Maybe it’s just the late hour, or Usnavi reading too much into it. He’s grateful anyway, for her letting him stay and the unspoken understanding that he’d rather be in Sonny’s room than on the couch. It ain’t all that comfortable in a sleeping bag on the floor, but it means that when things he’d rather not think about start flashing across the inside of his closed eyes he can sit up and check that Sonny’s silhouette shifting with the faint rise and fall of his breath is still there in the dim light from the window.

It’s reassuring enough that Usnavi can drift off, and when he wakes abruptly only a few hours later, there’s a fluff of curly hair tickling against his face and a warmth at his side. Sonny must have woke up and found Usnavi there; he’s curled up inside his quilt on the floor right next to him, breathing deep and peaceful.

Usnavi almost smiles. He drapes an arm over his baby cousin, and instantly falls back asleep til sunrise. It’s the most rest he’s had in weeks.

***

The next morning, Sonny’s chattering excitably over breakfast, about what he got for Christmas and how he wishes his mom didn’t have to go back to work “but Usnavi can watch me today so—“. 

Usnavi, pushing the cereal in his bowl around listlessly with a spoon, doesn’t miss the expression that passes over Marcela’s face.

“I’m sure Usnavi’s already got plans,” Marcela says. 

“I don’t mind stayin’ with him,” Usnavi says, watching her closely.  There’s that expression again.

“It’s fine, I’ll just drop him off at Abuela’s on my way to work.”

“Why can’t I just stay with Usnavi though?” Sonny asks. "He said it's fine."

“And I said that we're going to Abuela's, she's already expecting you.”

"But—"

“No buts.”

Sonny looks bewildered, but Usnavi knows exactly what’s happening. There’s alway some tension between him and Marcela, the details of her divorce from Usnavi’s Tío Miguel not entirely clear to him but he’s gathered from eavesdropping on his parents whispers that it was a rough one, that Miguel might have been seeing someone else. He’s always liked Tío Miguel, he’s a good uncle and a good father, the same easy laugh and big smile as Pai, as Usnavi. The idea he ain’t a good husband is upsettingly incongruous, so Usnavi never asked more: ignorance is bliss, and he suspects it ain’t something Sonny knows either. Whatever it was, it left Marcela’s connection to the De la Vega side of the family strained, clearly only maintained for Sonny’s sake. In spite of that, though, she’s always trusted Usnavi to look after him, to be responsible for his safety. 

Apparently that’s changed. Could be that she’s saying _you don’t need the stress,_ but it feels a lot more like _you showed up at midnight in your pajamas all delusional like a meth addict on the subway asking if Sonny was dead, so I don’t really want you watching my kid right now._ Can’t blame her, but it’s still crushing. Sonny's the only family he got left in the same country.

 “Listen to your mom,” Usnavi says. “I gotta go now anyway. Thanks for letting me stay, Marcela.”

"You’re welcome here any time,” she replies, and her voice is kind but he thinks she’s probably lying.

***

He’s out on the fire escape, fourth cigarette of the night burning close to the end, when there’s a suspect kinda clattering coming from right outside the bodega below, like someone’s rattling the grate. Usnavi’s down there in an instant.

It’s some punk with a spray can in hand, already making fast work of his tag across the front of the grate, E-T-E-P in outlined, kinda wobbly bubble letters that he’s filling in with color. He drops his can in surprise with a “hey—!” as Usnavi grabs him by the shoulders and spins him round to face him, demanding “what the _hell_ do you think you’re doin’, you son of a bitch?!”

The vandal attempts to struggle away and says “what’s it to you? It’s just some crappy abandoned store.”

“It ain’t abandoned!” Usnavi says hotly, grip tightening. “It’s mine. It’s _my_ store, that’s _my_ name on the sign, you ain’t got no right to put your name all over it!”

“Yo, let me go, you freak, what’s your deal?!”  His voice squeaks a little and it’s only that moment it clicks that this dude can’t be older than fourteen, a few inches shorter than Usnavi and wide-eyed under the sneering bravado, obviously scared. Goddammit.

Usnavi loosens his hold, keeps it just enough so the kid don’t make a break for it.“I ain’t recognize you," he says. "What’s your name? Your real one, not your bullshit graffiti one.”

“…Pete.”

“Aite, Pete —wait, is your tag seriously just your name writ backwards? Dios mio.” Shit, he really is just a dumbass kid. Usnavi lets go of his shoulder and picks up the backpack full of cans off the ground. “I’m takin’ these. You got anythin’ in here you need back? Keys or whatever?” 

“Wallet and keys. Front pocket,” Pete says sulkily. Usnavi tosses them to him. “You really gonna take my cans though? How am I meant to practice my art?” 

“Go buy some crayons, do you think I give a shit? Now vamos, I don’t wanna see your face round here again, you hear me?”

“Yeah, whatever,” Pete mutters, and just before he runs off, he adds with the petty venom only a fourteen year old can muster, “fuckin’ _psycho_.”

***

Usnavi’s trembling with rage too much to walk back up the stairs to his apartment, his legs all jerky like he's run a marathon and heart going full speed, so he goes into the bodega till he can calm down. He drops the backpack on the ground and tries to count to ten slowly in his head. Calm down, he has to calm down. It’s just some graffiti, it’ll clean off, they get it all the time.

Being in the bodega makes him feel worse, a month of neglect taunting him that no matter what he said outside, no matter the name written on the awning, this _is_ just a crappy abandoned store now. His parents left it behind, Usnavi’s barely stepped foot in here except to pick up cigarettes.

He picks up the nearest thing his hand touches, a paper cup, and throws it. It’s too light to be satisfying, barely making contact with the wall before it falls gently to the ground. For some reason that’s the thing that flips him right out of control. He kicks out at the counter, runs down the aisle tearing boxes off the shelves and when that’s not enough pushes a whole shelf unit down where it cracks one of the floor tiles. He gulps in deep, furious breaths and flings a bottle of cheap wine across the room, not caring if it'll stain the wall where it smashes.  _Fuck_ this shithole of a city, fuck this tomb of a store, burn it down for the fucking insurance money for all he cares because Usnavi don’t want any of it. He almost trips on Pete's backpack going behind the counter and it only makes him madder, scream suppressed in the back of his throat slamming his hands against the wall till they’re red-hot painful. A fragment of rational thinking stops him from punching it like he wants to - _don’t do that, you’ll break your hand -_ so instead he sweeps his arm across the coffee station to knock everything to the ground: the box of sugar packets and the carton of expired milk, the coffee pot which shatters on the floor and, too late to stop himself, the picture frame with his dad’s first dollar in it. 

That stops Usnavi’s rampage in its tracks, paralyzed in the middle of his own destruction. He’s broken everything, he’s left the bodega to die. If Pete hadn’t been so young Usnavi’s pretty sure he woulda beat the shit out of him, and that ain’t like him at all. God, the kid was right, he's gone full on get me a straitjacket _crazy_ , he’s in as many pieces as the coffee pot.

Crouching down and avoiding all the broken glass, Usnavi picks up the picture frame with shaky hands. It’s fine, not even a crack, the dollar inside still safe and sound; he clasps it to his chest in relief. 

Once, when he was very young, he had asked Mamá why Pai had bothered framing it - “it’s only one dollar, you can’t even buy videos with that.” Mamá had smiled, taken the old photo albums out to show him pictures of when they’d first got the store. He remembers one in particular, Pai and Kevin on ladders putting up the sign, clearly yelling at each other while Mamá stands on the ground smiling up at them, one hand shielding her eyes from the sun and the other hand resting on her pregnant belly. She told him all about how the place was a mess when they first bought it. It had taken weeks of cleaning up for it to be ready, but they were still so happy because it belonged to them. 

“That dollar might not be a lot of money,” she’d said, “but it’s a dollar that we wouldn’t have earned if we’d given up on it.”

They’d both always dreamed of owning a business, something that belonged to them, that they could pass on with pride to Usnavi. They'd never given up, they'd worked so hard to make it happen. Worked themselves to death for it.

Usnavi carefully wipes down the glass of the picture frame, sets the dollar back in its place on the side. Then he steps over the toppled shelf and heads for the row of cleaning products along the back wall. He’s got a store to fix up.


	7. Chapter 7

** Carla **

Carla hates walking to work in winter. It’s only a couple blocks from her place to the salon, but it’s dark and it’s cold and its kinda scary sometimes, with so few people about except the type of people you probably ain’t wanna cross paths with. She hides the bottom of her face inside the loop of her thick blue scarf, tucks her hands inside her pockets, and scurries through the snow. The lights in the salon glow invitingly from all the way down the street.

As she gets closer, half her mind focused on shivering and half of it keeping an eye out for hidden patches of ice or dog crap or early morning junkies, a figure outside the bodega catches her attention. At first she thinks it’s someone trying to break into the store, but as he moves into the flickering light she recognizes the grey Uptown’s Finest hoodie. It’s just Usnavi, headphones on, scrubbing at some graffiti on the grate at dumb o’clock in the morning. 

_Who the heck would choose to be up and out right now if they ain’t gotta be?_ she thinks, even though she’s already bumped into him before at this time. After they’d dragged him inside he’d slept on their break room couch for five hours, lights blaring, sneakers still on and all. Dani had been pretty worried, in her stoic Dani way, going back to check on him every time there was a break between customers. Poor kid. It’s hard to sleep when you’re stressed, and this is for sure more than a relaxing evening in a bubble bath can compete with.

Should she say something to him? But like, _what_ to say to him? Carla’s a pretty good talker even when she ain’t too sure what it is she’s talking about, but she ain’t quite so clueless as to not realize she’s really got a talent for putting her foot in it sometimes. This probably ain’t a good moment for her to run her mouth.

Dani will know what to do. So Carla goes into the salon, where Dani’s setting up the cash register, and tells her, “Usnavi’s outside again. He’s cleanin’ the grate.”

“Oh, is he, now?” Dani strides to the door to take a look outside, then quickly ducks back in from the cold. She shakes her head. “Ay, let him be. It’s better than him walking all over la ciudad all night.”

“Okay,” Carla says, dubiously, because leaving him feels mean, but if Dani says so…

Instructions from Dani or no, Carla’s inquisitive by nature. Little things that she doesn’t know how to interpret keep playing on her mind over the next few days. The lights are always on in the bodega on her way to work, shining out barely visible from the edges of the newly-cleaned grate. Usnavi’s upstairs neighbor comes in for a blow-dry and says sometimes when she gets woke up in the night by her back problems she can hear him leaving his apartment. Jayla from 5B says she saw him on her way to work the other day, out back taking a bunch of stuff from the store to the trash, "whole dumpster was so full it looked like he was guttin’ the place."

“Really?” Carla says, pausing with her comb in the air trying to think about what that might mean. 

“Uh-huh. I asked how come he’s throwin’ so much out, but he just says he was cleanin’ and put his headphones on before I could ask him no more.”

“Huh. Wonder what he’s doin’?”

“Never mind what Usnavi’s doing, what are my staff doing?” Dani  waves her scissors threateningly in Carla’s direction. “How do you expect me to work with all this chat, chat, chat all day long?”

“But Dani, don’t you think that—“

“I _think_ I pay you to cut hair, not gossip,” Dani says, in a voice that ends any possibility argument, even though Carla wants to point out that most of what they’ve done for the whole ten years she’s worked here is gossip. And Dani has no problem stopping everything to listen in with delight when Jayla changes topic to talk about how the woman who works at the desk next to her was caught getting dirty with an intern in the copy room - “explains why she spends so much time in there, huh? Refillin’ the toner my ass, only one gettin’ their toner refilled is her” - but if Carla knows anything it’s not to call Dani out on stuff like that, even when it don’t make much sense.

She keeps her curiosity in check until one day on the walk to work something too big to contain it happens.

“¡Ay, madre! Are you trying to give me an aneurysm?” Dani says, as Carla burst through the door shouting _Dani! Dani!_ “¿Qué es todo esto ruido?”

“The bodega’s open!”

Just like before, Dani runs to check for herself. Carla joins her, just to make sure she hadn’t imagined it. Both of them peer around the door, looking at at the open grate, the lights from the store window, the raised awning in a frozen silence until Dani gives a determined little exhale and stands up straight, smoothing her skirt.

“Okay! Well, we need café, and looks like Usnavi’s back in business. Vamos, Carla, time to support the local economy.” She takes her coat off the hook by the door and adds, quietly, “god knows he needs it.”

***

** Nina **

Sometimes Nina wishes she wasn’t the smart one. Being smart means thinking. It means thinking about everything, and definitely means overthinking about most of it.

Example: she’s just spent around ten agonizing minutes working herself into a mental frenzy over whether to set a place for Usnavi at the Three King’s Day meal her mom is hosting tonight. He wouldn’t give anyone a straight answer about whether he was coming and Nina knows that just like Christmas he doesn’t want to ruin the day for everyone. As if they won’t feel it just as much without him there. She eventually sets a plate and a chair out for him because she reasons it’d be far worse for him to show up and _not_ have a place set, like they’ve written him out of their story already, or like they were hoping he wouldn’t show. She doesn’t want to give up on him that fast. And maybe he’s getting better. The store reopened yesterday. Maybe that’s a good sign.

Rationalizing it out like that builds her hopes up until Abuela comes in, alone, and shakes her head before Nina can even ask. Nina puts the extra place setting away, shoves the cheap folding chair back into the corner, then goes to sit in her room and just breathe for a while, even when she hears Dani and Carla arrive and her mom calls twice for her to come be sociable. Getting it wrong feels like a personal failing, like the amount of places was a test and she just got an F. _I set up nine chairs and only one was wrong, 88.8 percent, that’s still an A,_ she tells herself. And then she tells herself, _are you really getting upset over how well you did at guessing party guests like it’s the most important part of this whole situation?_ even though, as always, being painfully analytical of her own shortcomings does not in fact make her feel any better about their existence.

At dinner it’s quiet, there’s too much extra room round the table, too many missing pieces in songs that are too solemn, too forced. This would be easier to bear if Vanessa had shown, but she’s avoiding for exactly the same reasons Nina doesn’t wanna be here. At dinner there’s usually laughing and shouting and a hundred toasts in a night, but this time there’s just Dad, standing up with his glass in his hand. He doesn’t praise the food, or the season, or make some jab about being kicked out of his own kitchen that makes Camila swat at him. He just stands, and swirls the wine gently around in the glass for so long that it starts to get uncomfortable. Eventually, he says, in a low, quick voice, “Por nuestros amigos ausentes. Salud.”

“Salud,” everyone murmurs, raising their glasses, except for Sonny on the other side of the table, who just folds his arms and slides so far down in his seat she can only see his curls and his furrowed eyebrows. Doesn’t she just wish she could get away with doing the same, or leaving the table altogether. She picks at her dinner, ignoring the subdued conversation and the fact that her mom keeps dabbing at her eyes with a paper napkin. Watches the snow falling outside the window and thinks, _it isn’t snowing in Puerto Rico._

A silly escapism, she knows, but one as familiar as a book read so often the binding’s come loose _._ Sometimes Nina thinks she thinks so much her brain is constantly boiling and any day it’s going to bubble right out of her ears and _splat_ , cerebral matter all over the floor like an overflowing soup bowl in a microwave. She’s built her own private Puerto Rico in her head for those days, a fantastical Narnia of a Puerto Rico built from rose-tinted childhood memories and anecdotes, the endless double-edged comfort of an unexplorable _if. If_ she’d grown up there maybe the future wouldn’t be a constant weight on her head, _if_ she’d grown up there she’d know for sure where she’s meant to be. _If_ she’d grown up there she’d be surrounded by people who speak the same as her, instead of the placeless American voice she grew into, her dad always telling her that he doesn’t care how Usnavi or Vanessa or any of her friends talk, because they’re not his daughter. He says Nina’s meant for so much more than the barrio. He says it will hold her back if she talks like she’s from the hood, even though she _is_ from the hood, so now she just sounds like she’s from nowhere. And what good is it being from a place when nobody can tell and you don’t really know what it means and where the people that make it what it is can disappear any second?

_If_ she’d grown up in Puerto Rico, she wouldn’t even know to miss the Rosca de Reyes that Rosa’s made every January sixth since Nina can remember, she wouldn’t miss Mateo heckling Dad’s over-lengthy speeches, or Usnavi’s skinny elbow nudging her and his unapologetic grin while he steals food off her plate. They’re not her family to have lost but they’re still lost, and Nina’s tangling herself further and further into a web of self-conscious self-criticism of her selfish grief when Abuela starts gathering dishes and she realizes dinner’s over.

“Claudia, you’re a guest, you don’t need to do that,“ Mom starts, standing up.

“¡No no no, tonterías, sientate! I can pull my weight. Ninita! Help an old lady con los platos.”

In the kitchen, Abuela starts stacking plates by the basin. She says, “Habla conmigo, mija. What’s on your mind?”

_Everything, always, all the time_ , Nina thinks, wryly, because it’s easier to be wry than to listen to the part of her that sounds like a little kid that’s asking _does life just get harder and harder, and lonelier and lonelier?_

“Do you miss them?’ she asks, in a bad parody of a steady voice while she scrapes off leftovers into the trash, and presses her tongue very hard to the roof of her mouth to keep herself from crying.

Abuela starts running the water, testing the temperature with one finger and giving a weighted, weary sigh. “Yes. Yes, I miss them very much.”

“Okay,” Nina says, and stands beside Abuela to help with dishes, shoulder against shoulder. “Okay. Good. Me too.”

***

** Camila **

Camila’s outside the bodega, just out of sight from the window, one hand clutched around the box in her pocket. It’s no weather to be standing around in, but she’d been making her determined way over when she’d suddenly recalled a conversation with Rosa, and had to stop to pull herself together. It hurts to think about Rosa, their long friendship, the talks they’ll never have again, and Camila refuses to break down about it in front of Usnavi. She and Kevin save those moments for nighttime, when Nina won’t overhear, when they don’t need to put a brave face on for the children or for the rest of the world.

It was last September, when Mateo was recovering from a chest infection only a few months before that second, more final sickness hit. The medical bills had cut right into the De la Vegas savings, including, Rosa told her, the money they’d been keeping by for Usnavi’s eighteenth birthday. They’d had to cancel their plans: the trip to DR, the big gift ideas, they just wouldn’t be able to do anything but the usual small party with what they’d got left.

“We should still be able to take the trip later in the summer, but we really wanted something special for him,” Rosa had said, dejected.

Camila remembered that exact feeling from just before Nina’s quinceañera, after a year or more of saving up for it, looking around at their best attempt to celebrate her daughter growing up and still feeling like it should be so much more than what they could provide _._ Rosa had been a great comfort to her then: _the main thing_ , she said, _is that you’ve given Nina everything you have the ability to give, including a good life. That’s more important than one party, isn’t it?_ She reached across the table to pat Rosa’s hand _._ “We can only do what we can with what we’ve got, mami, Usnavi will understand. You don’t need to spend lots of money on him for it to be a good day.”

“We’d even been trying to put something aside to help him get a place of his own one day. He doesn’t want to be living with his parents forever, a boy his age needs some independence. And since it’s not like we’re sending him to college…”

“He doesn’t want to go to college anyway, does he?”

“Maybe he would’ve done, if we’d had more money, if we’d been able to get him the help he needs earlier on in school.” Rosa shrugged. “Pero, all that’s out the window now, so I suppose he’ll just have to make do with cake.”

“Problem solved, then. I’ve never heard Usnavi complain about cake.”

“Ha! Sí, that is a _very_ good point.”

“He’ll be happy with whatever you get him. You know he knows how hard you work for him.” Camila shook her head. “Can you believe he’ll be eighteen next year?”

“I don’t _want_ to believe it,” Rosa said, wistfully. “I want him to be my baby forever. They grow up too fast, don’t they?”

That could have been yesterday, and now it’s already Usnavi’s birthday. Camila can’t give him all the things Rosa wanted for him, and she certainly can’t give him what he really needs, but he deserves _something_. There’s only one thing she could think of, something she’d taken at the funeral home because she knew that they’d want to pass them onto him, but she’s never found the right moment to bring it up. 

Enough dwelling on the past. Rosa wasn’t one to wallow, and neither is Camila. She pushes open the bodega door and Usnavi’s standing by the shelves with a sticker gun, repricing all the two-liter soda bottles.

“Hola, cariño,” she says.

“Hey,” he replies. Camila notes how he doesn’t even pretend to try and keep the conversation going, he just keeps working as if he’s already forgotten she’s there.

“It’s your birthday today,” she says, because _happy birthday_ feels cruel.

“Yup. The big one-eight.” He stickers a Pepsi Max bottle with unnecessary force.

“I have something for you.”

That gets his attention: he puts the sticker gun and the Pepsi on the shelf and turns around, a rueful twist to the corner of his mouth. “You done more than enough for me already, Camila,” he says. “I ain’t expect no presents.”

“It isn’t a present, really,” she says. “They already belong to you.”

She isn’t sure whether it’ll help or hurt him when she hands over the jewelry box with his parents’ wedding rings inside. She still isn’t sure even after he opens it; his face is expressionless, though he touches both bands with his thumb as though he’s checking they’re the real thing. But it gives her a long moment to really look at him: his solemn brown eyes circled with exhaustion; the tight serious set of his shoulders; that patchy adolescent peach-fuzz of his starting to grow out darker and a little unkempt.

“Ay, they grow up too fast,” she thinks.

***

** Benny **

The real fucked up thing about restarting school is that by this point it basically feels normal that Usnavi ain’t there. He ain’t been in since he came down with pneumonia and yeah, Benny had felt his absence, had felt real bad for him getting so sick, but he’s got other friends, a life to live, and everyone has sick days. It sucked that his buddy was gone for so long, but he don’t need Usnavi to hold his hand at recess, he coped.

The absences felt different after _it_ happened: _everyone_ was asking Benny about it, all the time, until he got so sick of it that he coulda punched someone. Woulda done, if he was just a little younger and dumber, but he’s got a hold on his shit these days, so he just waited with gritted teeth for it to stop being the headline news.

Now, first week back, nobody asks about Usnavi, not even any of his friends. It’s not that they don’t care, only that its so much more uncomfortable to talk about it than ignore it, and it ain’t no change from before so it ain’t like there’s much left to discuss.

Benny’s lying to himself: the real fucked up thing ain’t that they got used to Usnavi not being around. The fucked up thing is it’s easier this way. The fucked up thing is that it’s kind of a relief. It’s a relief to hang out with people when _hanging out_ doesn’t mean watching movies in the strange emptiness of Usnavi’s apartment, sneaking glances to his side and seeing that Usnavi isn’t even looking at the screen properly. It’s a relief to talk to people who talk back and cuss and laugh and shout and have fun.

Look, he wants Usnavi to come back to school, he does. But, he wants _Usnavi_ to come back to school, like things used to be. It’s just real hard to spend all his time trying to cheer someone up who he don’t even know how to talk to no more. He ain’t gonna abandon Usnavi, not right now when he needs everyone he can get, but…y’know. Benny needs a break too. So at school it’s easy to just think of it like Usnavi’s still on sick days, and save reality for after the bell.

On Friday, though, Miss Nichols asks him to hang back after homeroom. She waits for everyone else to leave then turns to Benny and says, bluntly, “principal’s on my back about Usnavi. He won’t answer the phone or return any calls, and we don’t have an updated next of kin. Is he comin’ back?”

“I…don’t actually know,” Benny says, caught off guard by the truth of it.

“You two are still friends, aren’t you?”

“Of course we are!” Benny says, indignant. “It’s —things are hard, that’s all. And I ain’t tellin’ you all his business, but you think he ain’t got a _damn_ good reason for not showin’ up to school?”

“Benny, I know that,” she says. “I’m doing everythin' I can to buy him more time, but there’s legal stuff. He needs to talk to the counsellor about how we can manage…everythin’, else he’s not gonna be able to graduate. Please, just tell him to call us back, we can find a way to make this work. He’s gonna listen to you more than me.”

She shuffles some stuff around on her desk and adds, “and tell him he’s in my prayers, will you?”

“Sure,” Benny says. He starts walking to his next but finds himself going downstairs, ducking out of school through the gap in the fence round the back where they never bother to watch, even though everyone knows it’s there. He don’t feel like studying today. All that pretending that Usnavi’s just still sick meant that some part of Benny’s subconscious had just assumed things would go back to how they’d always been, Usnavi sitting at the top of the steps with his radio, the two of them getting in trouble in class together, all the shit that’s been a fact of every day for years.He wouldn’t just drop out, right? He can’t just leave all that behind?

It’s too risky to go back home in case his mom’s about, so instead Benny goes to the store. Usnavi waves at him, either not noticing or not interested enough to question the fact that Benny’s there at ten AM on a Friday. Benny picks up a bunch of random shit he don’t really need and sets it down on the counter.

“So,” he says casually. “Miss Nichols talked to me today. About you.”

Usnavi raises one eyebrow. “Yeah?” 

“Why ain’t you answerin’ none of their calls, man? You know if you don’t you ain’t gonna graduate, right?”

“Mmm.” Usnavi taps quickly on a calculator beside him. “That’s seven dollars fifty-six.”

Benny hands over a ten, with a sinking feeling. “You…you are gonna come back to school, right? You gotta come back eventually.”

“Did you want a bag for this?” Usnavi says.

***

**Kevin**

_The workday is long enough without taking on extra_ , Kevin thinks, watching  as Camila runs herself ragged making sure all the De la Vega business is taken care of. Speaking to Usnavi’s landlord and managing to get an extension on the apartment rent for him, calling around every spare moment of the day with every trick in the book to take the hospital bills down as far as possible. There’s barely any time they see each other that she’s not frantically rushing about trying to juggle everything at once. Shouldn’t something like this bring everyone together? Between Camila’s second workload and Nina suddenly always being out with Vanessa or shutting herself in her room all evening, there’s little time for family at all.

Kevin isn’t heartless. He misses Mateo too, and Rosa, he misses them deeply, he knows that it’s far too early to expect Usnavi to not be grieving. But when Camila starts fretting that Usnavi shouldn’t be running the store, that he should leave it up to them to worry about finances, it seems like things are getting out of hand. Typical Camila, of course, always wanting to be in charge of everything, but eighteen isn’t such a crazy age to start work, is it? Especially with the business already set up and running. Kevin had only been nineteen when they moved over here and he’d set up his shoeshine business. People have been doing harder work with less at younger ages for centuries.

When he says as much that to Camila, she says “don’t you think he’s got enough on his mind already? And I’m worried about him. He hasn’t been in school since they got sick.”

“I suppose he doesn’t need to, if he’s got the bodega.”

“Honestly, I don’t know if the bodega is sustainable. I’m just trying to do what I think they’d want for him. What we’d want someone else to do for Nina if she was in the same situation. Would you be happy, if she dropped out to run the dispatch all alone?”

“Well, of course it would be different for Nina,” Kevin says, “She needs to go to college, she’s got too much potential to drop out. Usnavi is…”

The pause hangs meaningfully, until Camila shakes her head and says “Kevin Rosario, you are _unbelievable_ ,” gathering up her papers and storming off to the kitchen to work on them alone.

He hadn’t meant anything by it, of course. Usnavi’s got a good heart, but look, you can tell who’s going places and who isn’t, that’s simply how the world works.

As the evening goes on with Camila maintaining her disapproving silent treatment, though, Kevin finds his thoughts wandering to last summer, when Nina had been tutoring Usnavi to retake the math exam he’d failed the year before. Kevin had sometimes come by, just to watch with pride as she explained the same thing over and over without ever seeming frustrated: what a patient, kind girl his daughter has grown up to be. 

Kevin will admit it, he hasn’t always been the most generous in his perspective on Usnavi. _Yes, yes, “learning difficulties”, but it’s really only a matter of pushing yourself harder. No excuses for slacking off._  And then during those tutoring sessions he’d also seen Usnavi, frequently near tears, fingers clenched around his pen so hard they turned white, taking a deep breath and saying “okay, I’m gonna get it this time”, no matter how many times he was wrong, and he'd understood a little more why Mateo had never taken kindly to any of his tactful suggestions that Usnavi just needed more self-discipline.

When Usnavi had passed his retake and brought his grade average up enough to pass, Mateo had been as excited about that as Kevin is at every 100% and A+ Nina brings home. “You see that, Kevin?” he bragged. “My boy’s gonna be the first De la Vega to graduate!”

What would Mateo have done, if it were Nina?

The next day during his break Kevin goes to the bodega, mentally cursing out Camila for always getting under his skin and, worse, for always being right. Usnavi’s at the counter, pen in one hand and gripping at his hair with the other.

He looks up as Kevin comes in and tosses his pen down, saying, “you got a business, Kevin, tell me, do they make all this shit up just to fuck with us?”

“Absolutamente. What are you working on?”

“Studyin’, I guess. I at least wanna understand the basics of what I’m doin’ here so I don’t completely tank within a month. Like, the fuck is sales tax even for?”

“That’s what I came to speak to you about, actually. There’s a lot of learning goes into running a business. I just want you to know, if you ever need advice, I’ve made enough mistakes in my day to tell you how to do it right. Here, let me see what you’ve got so far.” Kevin takes the paper and frowns down at it, but it’s a hopeless effort. “Ah. Uh, to be honest, this is a little…”

“Unreadable? Yeah.” Usnavi takes the paper, smooths it out on the counter like getting rid of the creases might fix up the writing. “Gracias, though, I appreciate the offer. I shoulda learnt all this before, but Mama always said there’d be time later so I never bothered. Guess I ain’t got no choice now.”

“What about school? You are going to finish, aren’t you? Benny said your teachers keep asking about you. ”

Usnavi shrugs. “Too much to do here.”

“Not if you sold the store,” Kevin says, as gently as possibly but Usnavi instantly stiffens up. “A high school diploma could make a whole world of difference. You’ll have more career options, you could even take a night class in business to prepare you for if you wanted to reopen —“

“I aint sellin’ our store, man.” He picks up a cloth and turns away to clean the coffee station, though it already looks spotless. “Y’know, you always talk like if everyone just _tries_ they can do anythin’ and be anyone ‘cause that’s how Nina is. Well, it don’t work like that for people like me. I ain’t passin’ no night classes or impressin’ no employers with my damn 2.0, so what’s the point? Let’s be real, Kevin, nobody ever really thought I would graduate anyway.”

Kevin clicks his tongue in surprise. He may have thought it, once or twice, but it does seem harsher knowing Usnavi himself is apparently aware of it.

“Your parents thought you would,” he says. “I can’t make you finish school, Usnavi. But they always believed you could do it. You still have a chance to prove them right.”

Usnavi just carries on cleaning, scrubbing furiously like he’s trying to take the plastic coating off the counter.

***

** Vanessa **

The first day Vanessa starts her part-time job at the salon starts off with a fight with her mom, because apparently Vanessa sweeping up hair and getting hot drinks for a few hours every Saturday is yet another sign that Dani is undermining every parental choice Mom has ever made.

“You do that pretty well by yourself,” Vanessa says.

“Don’t act like she ain’t always doin’ things like this,” Mom snaps. “Offerin’ you a job like she’s so much better than me for ownin’ a busness.”

“She didn’t even offer! I _asked_ her for a job, and she gave me one.”

“You’re still a kid! What the hell are you goin’ out askin’ for jobs for?”

“Because _one of us has to!”_ Vanessa shouts, and hopes that the loud slam of the door hurts Mom’s hangover like hell. 

Truce over, it looks like. They’d had a good Christmas together. A quiet Christmas, not as such a happy one, but one with a keen awareness that dysfunctional as it is, Vanessa and her mom are a family. It was…ugh. Comforting, or whatever.

Oh well. Shit like that never lasts, anyway, Vanessa don’t bother to get her hopes up any more. This is just a sign that everything’s getting back to normal. And it really is, in most ways. The job is new, something she’s doing partly because she started reading Mom’s bills and decided that someone needs to have some savings just in case, and partly because Kevin’s started bringing Nina into the dispatch on Saturday mornings - says it’s good for her to take a break from books and learn something about the real world too - so it ain't like Vanessa can hang out with her anyway. Aside from that, though, there’s music playing at the salon again, the usual chatter and laughter. Nina stops crying randomly during the day and starts talking about study plans, life plans, everything plans again, while Vanessa complains about bad teachers and bad songs and bad hair days. It’s like nothing’s even changed, except for when Dani sends Vanessa out on the coffee run to the bodega during her shifts.

“I could just make the coffee here,” Vanessa suggests, and Dani says “I give you a job and you have the nerve to threaten me?”

“I ain’t that bad at it,” she protests, but Dani won’t hear it, and there’s no way she’ll be allowed to waste time going to the next closest bodega so looks like she’s stuck going to Usnavi’s.

Usnavi makes coffee as good as Mateo ever did, and Usnavi sometimes asks Vanessa how she’s doing, but his attention visibly wanders while she answers and mostly he just asks _you want a bag for that?_ or _you need anythin’ else?_ He don’t smile or sing or slip free things into her bag with a wink, none of the De la Vega stuff that made the bodega what it was, but that’s fine. It’s fine that everything else is normal except him, except that the odd mixture of comfort and envy Vanessa used to get watching that funny, fluid dance of daily life of the three De la Vegas working together has given way to something even more complicated, the envy of what he had combined with pity of what he don’t have no more and the fear that things she’d always assumed were unbreakable are broken now. 

She shouldn’t have bothered to get her hopes up, even vicariously, that some relationships might be built to last. People always move on. People die or get divorced or get sad. That’s life, and Vanessa ain’t got time to go round getting all maudlin about something she can’t change, ain’t she wasted enough time trying to stop her mom being sad? She feels bad for Usnavi, sure, but it ain’t nothing to do with Vanessa, and what the fuck would she know anyway about any of this? Let him be sad, at least he’s got a good excuse for it.

And it don’t mean nothing, either, that on days when she’s not at work and needs to pick up groceries she’ll walk further out to the next bodega. Usnavi don’t owe nobody his happiness and Vanessa don’t owe nobody nothing, and it's totally unrelated to anything. The other store’s just got better selection of food, that’s it. Nothing to do with whatever the hell feeling you call it when you look at the human version of sunshine and realize it’s started raining.

How long’s it supposed to be until someone’s themself again? A month ain’t very long, even two. Six months? A year? Forever? 

January’s ready to give up to February, Usnavi may as well be a self-service checkout for all he engages with the customers, and Vanessa has no feelings at all on the matter. So her heart definitely doesn’t jump with relief and anticipation when one day at lunch break, Benny Roberts comes up to her and Nina and says, “we gotta do somethin’ about Usnavi.”


	8. Chapter 8

** Benny **

From the second he first stepped into Usnavi’s apartment after hearing the news and saw his best friend completely falling apart in Abuela's arms, Benny’s known he is not even slightly equipped to deal with this situation by himself. No shortage of people who he could ask to help him out: Usnavi’s almost universally well-liked and even the few people who never got the message ain’t gonna be assholes to the kid who just got orphaned, but the times it's come up with any classmates, Benny ain’t even wanted to talk about it, never mind give them more details on just how hard it’s hit. Too much like airing dirty laundry, too much like throwing open the doors to Usnavi’s echoingly empty apartment and telling everyone to have a good ogle at it. 

He was kind of hoping things would start to work themselves out with time, but there ain’t all that much time left before graduation, and from their conversation yesterday it feels like Usnavi might have already made his choice. So maybe Benny's already left it too long to do any good, but he’s gotta try. The next day he searches out Nina and Vanessa on the small staircase round by the fire exit where they usually sit, and says “we gotta do somethin’ about Usnavi.”

The girls look at each other, then Nina indicates the step next to her. He sits.

“Tell us what we can do,” she says.

“I think he’s gonna drop out, and I don’t know how to stop him.”

“Why stop him?” Vanessa says. “Good for him gettin’ out of this hellhole early, wish I could.”

_“Not_ good for him. He’s just gonna hole up in the store all the time, and I don’t think it’s doin’ him no good bein’ in there so much.”

An uncomfortable silence settles over them. 

“I keep expecting to see them whenever I go in,” Nina says quietly.Vanessa looks away and starts braiding her hair. “Every single time. Don’t you?”

Nail on the head: this is why Benny came to them instead of anyone else. Just like him, Nina and Vanessa spent a childhood entwined with the store , going inside after a tumble outside so that Mateo could patch up their scraped knees, confiding in Rosa things that it was far too embarrassing to tell their own moms, they’ve sat on top of the counter watching customers when their parents have been at work and nobody else could look after them. It’s all Benny can think about in that place, so how the hell is Usnavi supposed to start living his own life again if he don’t step out of their memory every once in a while?

“I already tried to talk to him,” he says. “He just pretended like he didn’t even hear me and I ain’t much good at the sensitive stuff so I didn’t know what to say. But he’s gotta come back, right? So I thought maybe if one of you talked to him about it—

“Yeah, yes, obviously,” Nina says. “He worked so hard last summer to pass his retakes, we’re not letting him throw that away.”

“Hm,” Vanessa says.

“What?”

“Oh, nothin’. We all know how much Usnavi _loooves_ school _._ Coming back’s _definitely_ gonna cheer him up.”

“At least its gettin’ him outside,” Benny says. “The hell else we gonna do, take him to a theme park?”

Without answering, Vanessa leans back to rest her elbows on the step behind her, radiating disapproving energy.

“It’s just somewhere to start from,” Nina says. “Meet at the gates after school, we’ll go talk to him. He can’t ignore all of us at once.”

***

It’s long past the last bell and there’s only two of them at the gates. Benny checks his watch. “Jeez, where is Nina?”

“Maybe she realised this was a dumb idea and bailed,” Vanessa suggests in a bored voice, still playing on her phone. She hasn’t bothered engaging Benny in conversation other than reminding him how much she doesn’t agree with anything they’re doing. Her whole don’t-care schtick is really grating on him right now: she could stand to drop the attitude for five minutes.

“If you ain’t wanna—“ he starts, before Nina comes running up to them.

“Sorry, had to check something first,” she says, breathlessly. “Let’s go.”

They do their best to act natural coming into the store, but something about them must be screaming _this is an intervention_ because Usnavi takes one look at them then immediately starts typing random numbers into the cash register to shuffle around its contents, effectively proving that yes, he can actually ignore all three of them at once.

“We need to talk,” Benny says.

Usnavi hmms, dismissive. “I’m at work right now.”

“Pretty hard to catch you anywhere else these days,” Nina says gently. “Don’t you think maybe you’re working a bit too much?”

“No, I don’t,” Usnavi says. “Was that all?”

Vanessa makes an impatient noise and shoves in front of Nina. “Yo, Usnavi. You gonna drop out of school, yes or no?”

Benny elbows her, but the bluntness apparently surprises Usnavi enough that he answers “yes” instantly, then looks like he regrets it as soon as Benny and Nina start protesting.

“You can’t just leave!”

“It’s only a couple months left!”

Usnavi counts out a stack of bills, making a note on a piece of paper next to him. Has he always been this fucking impossible to talk to?

“It wouldn’t even have to be full time,” Nina pushes. “I spoke to the counsellor’s office today and obviously nothing’s set in stone until you talk to them but they said it's pretty likely you’d only be expected to attend enough to get your credits and nobody’s gonna be too harsh, they all understand the situation—“

Usnavi puts the stack off cash back in the register and slams it closed, the echo loud enough to shut everyone up. “Oh, they understand, do they? You all fuckin _’ understand_? Glad someone does. You made any more big decisions about my life without me, since apparently I ain’t capable of doin’ it myself?”

“I wasn’t—“ Nina says, stepping back a little. “Th-that isn’t what I was trying to…”

Benny puts a reassuring hand on her arm. “Leave off, Usnavi, she’s just tryna help.”

“Well, she ain’t. You all really think it’s so simple and I’m just too dumb to think of hirin’ someone else? I can’t _afford_ no staff. It’s great you’re all tryna look out for me, I appreciate it, but there ain’t nothin you can do to help.” He breathes in raggedly, then composes himself and in a frighteningly wooden voice like the ventriloquist dummy version of a store clerk asks, "so can I get you anything or is that all?"

“Usnavi…“

“C’mon,” Vanessa says. “Let’s go, Benny.” She’s got her arm around Nina who looks like she’s about to cry, and Benny has no idea what else to say anyhow, so he shrugs and follows them out.

“I’m fine,” Nina says when he asks if she's alright, setting her jaw stoically. “I’m fine, we’ll just have to come up with a different approach for next time.”

“Different than stompin’ all over the conversation, yeah,” Benny says, directed at Vanessa. “What the hell were you thinkin, just askin’ him like that? You ever hear of tact?”

“You ever hear of wastin’ your time?” she answers. “Like he was gonna answer any different doin’ it your way, at least I got it over with. I told you this was a dumb idea.”

“Well, y’know what, Vanessa, I ain’t see you comin' up with any better solutions, and I think I know him better than you—“

“Then why’d you come to us to fix things if you know him so well?” she retorts. “He’s right, you ain’t got no idea what he’s goin' through.”

“And you do?”

“Better than you! Either of you the only adult in your house? Either of you the one workin’ to pay for for food and bills 'cause your mom ain’t gonna take care of it for you? ‘Cause I am, and so’s he, and let me tell you somethin’, it fuckin _sucks.”_

Alright, Benny is so done with her. “Oh, don’t act like you’re the only one out of us who’s broke! I’m sorry your mom’s a bitch but this is about helpin’ Usnavi so if all you got is negativity then you ain't gotta be involved and you can leave this to people who have enough feelings to actually give a shit about him.”

“Oof,” Nina murmurs. Vanessa gives Benny the kind of glare that’s made her the terror of untold amounts of eleventh grade boys, and he’s expecting to get totally chewed out, but she just jabs a finger into his chest and says, “fuck you, Benny Roberts,” then storms off. He looks at Nina and all he gets from her is a staredown, not quite as icy as Vanessa but pretty high up there.

“That was too far,” she says. “You should apologize to her.”

“Nina—“

“I have to go home now,” she says, and follows Vanessa’s path down the street.

Benny curses to himself, kicking the wall beside him before he gets his shit together and starts walking the opposite direction back to his own place.  Vanessa hit a nerve. He'd never admit it aloud but she's right: he really don’t understand any of that shit she was talking about, and what kills him is how long he'd spend so convinced he’d got it all figured out. Got a job at sixteen to pay Kevin for driving lessons, pays all his own car insurance and gas. Career already set up ahead of him. Independent, that’s Benny.  _So independent my mom still pays the bills,_ he thinks. And the rent. She still calls in to check he’s okay if she’s away with work for longer than a day. He ain’t never thought about what if his mom wasn’t around, or about what if he does everything right and it still don’t work out for him, because things _always_ work out, right? 

But with his final year of school flying so much quicker than he’d anticipated, all the nice ties and smart shirts in the world ain’t made him feel any more ready to face the unknowns after graduation. He’d been counting on one thing without even knowing it until it was taken away: that if nothing else, he’d be more ready than Usnavi. As kids - hell, as teenagers too - Usnavi would almost always go anywhere Benny went, and that made it easier for Benny to be the one taking the first step into something new, to pretend he knew more than he did and was less scared than he was. Now even if they do get Usnavi back to school, he’s already gone somewhere Benny hasn’t been leading, and maybe he’ll never come back. Benny feels like he’s pretty much clutching at straws just to not be left behind. He ain't never thought about what growing up might be without Usnavi next to him.

***

**Vanessa**

Vanessa fumes all the way home and carries it with her to her shift at the salon. Her mood isn’t helped by Dani making a cross-shape with her fingers and holding them up at Vanessa’s scowling face like she’s trying to ward off a vampire, or by Carla giggling while she does it. And it’s made even worse by Sonny De la Vega and his mom walking in halfway through her shift while she’s sweeping the floor, because that makes her think about Usnavi and that means she’s thinking about Benny and his bullshit all over again. Sonny, to his credit, at least has the decency to look just as pissed as Vanessa feels. She makes a face at him in solidarity and he sticks his tongue out at her then goes back to complaining about being dragged along to the salon instead of the million other things he’s listing off that he’d rather be doing instead. Vanessa ain’t really paying attention until she hears “—why can’t I just hang out in the store like normal,” and Marcela’s short “no”.

Vanessa moves closer under the pretence of straightening up a picture-frame near the couch to listen in, as Sonny says, “but I never get to see him no more.”

“He’s very busy, mijo, he doesn’t need you getting under his feet.”

Sonny slouches down, defeated, but only for a second. “Oh! I could get a job there!”

Marcela only laughs a little, and shakes her head, still flicking through her magazine.

“No, no, it’s a great idea!” Sonny insists. “It’d mean I can still hang out with Usnavi and I wouldn’t be in his way ‘cause I’d be helpin’, so he wouldn’t be so busy, and I’d be makin’ money so you aint gotta work so much no more neither, and I ain’t really need to go to school anyhow ‘cause I’ve pretty much learned everythin’ already, and—“

Marcela holds up a hand, obviously losing patience. “You’re ten years old, you’re not getting a job at the bodega, and you still have to go to school.”

“But _why_? Usnavi ain’t gotta!”

“Well, Usnavi is—“ she gives a little exasperated out-breath. “You aren’t going to the bodega today and that’s my last word on it.”

“Usnavi is what?” Vanessa says, loudly.

“Vanessa,” Dani calls a warning from across the salon.

“No, I want her to finish.” Vanessa folds her arms. “Usnavi’s what? Usnavi’s too difficult to deal with so you’re just gonna cut him loose? Usnavi might be droppin’ out so now he ain’t good enough to look after Sonny no more?”

“Vanessa!”

_“What?_ Where are you getting _that_ from?” Marcela says but now Sonny’s up in her face with a horrified gasp, saying “is that really why you ain’t let me see him?”

“I do let you see him!”

“Hardly never no more! You always send me to Abuela’s or Nina’s instead of his place, and—“

“I told you, he’s got enough on his plate without—“

“Without spendin’ time with the last bit of family he’s got left?”Vanessa challenges, at which Dani throws down her scissors and comes over.

“I…” Marcela trails off.

“Vanessa, go wait for me in the breakroom,” Dani says, pushing lightly at Vanessa’s shoulder. 

She shakes Dani’s hand off harshly, her heart going a thousand miles a minute in pure anger, too overwhelming to direct it so it’s just exploding everywhere. “You ain’t my mom, you can’t tell me what to do! _”_

“I am your _boss!_ And I am telling you to go wait in the breakroom, _now.”_

“ _God_!” Vanessa turns on her heel with her hair flying and face burning, throws one last look over her shoulder to note with satisfaction that Marcela’s got a contemplative, guilty on her face, and that Sonny meets Vanessa’s eye and nods at her. 

“Can’t believe a ten year old’s the only one with any goddamn sense around here,” she seethes to herself while she waits in the breakroom. To hell with Benny and Dani and Marcela. Vanessa ain’t gonna apologize for being right. 

She’s left to stew until there’s a break between appointments, which only means she's even madder by the time Dani comes in and says, “you better have a damn good reason for that,” shutting the door behind her.

“You heard what she said!” Vanessa says, getting to her feet to stamp one foot.

“I heard you yelling at a customer over nothing.”

“Over _nothing?!_ She’s supposed to be his family and she don’t even care!”

“She does care! It’s a complicated —“

“Like hell it is! She’s just decided he’s too much effort now he’s sad and can’t play free babysitter for her, if she gave a damn she’d actually ask if he wants Sonny there instead of just assumin’ he don’t. Everyone’s always sayin’ it’s complicated or they’re tryna help but nobody’s askin’ him if he _wants_ their help.”

Dani holds her hands out like _over to you, then. “_ So what do you suggest, chica, we just leave him to get on with it all alone? We all act like nothing's changed?”

“No—y—I don’t know!” Vanessa throws herself back down on the couch. “It just seems like everyone just wants him to be happier so’s it’ll make _their_ lives easier, so they ain’t have to deal with him.”

“We want him to be happier because we love him.”

Through a sudden block in her throat, and even though she’s scared of the answer, Vanessa stares at the floor and asks “and what if he don’t get better? What if he’s just sad and angry forever, will everyone still love him then?”

“Oh, Vanessa.” Dani’s voice is very gentle all of a sudden, and she sits down on the couch next to Vanessa and hugs her tightly. “Of course. Of course we will.”

"Stop huggin' me," Vanessa mutters, making a half-hearted attempt to get herself out of it, but Dani holds on and suddenly out of nowhere Vanessa’s crying into her shoulder, silly overtired-kid tears with stupid noises and shaky breathing, and she doesn't know  _why_ , which only makes it worse, and every time she nearly gets it under control it starts back up again, until there’s a light knock at the door.

“Dani, your five o’clock is here," Carla calls.

“¡Bueno, un momento!” Dani picks up a tissue and licks the corner of it then brings it to Vanessa’s face to scrub off her mascara-trails. “Ay, look at you. Parace un gatito ahogado, you’re in no fit state to work. Do you want to go home?”

Vanessa squirms away. “No.”

Dani makes a sad _tch_ noise under her breath and says, “come back out when you’re ready, then, linda.” 

She kisses Vanessa on the forehead before she leaves, which brings a fresh wave of tears. She hates this so much. She hates everything so fucking much. 

A text alert buzzing is a welcome distraction from her own embarrassing outburst: it’s from Benny, and it just says “sorry about earlier”.

“yeah, whatever,” she texts back. It ain’t like he was wrong about her mom being a bitch, after all. But even though Vanessa works her ass off to cultivate the reputation for never giving a shit about nobody or nothing, when it works well enough that people accuse her of being heartless for some reason it really gets under her skin. She does care about Usnavi, she cares so much it makes her want to break something. It ain’t like she was saying to give up on him, it’s just she thinks he should be allowed to feel like shit if he wants, and if he wants to stay in the store forever ain't that up to him?

That said, she also really doesn’t _want_ him to be sad and angry forever. If even someone as obnoxiously optimistic as Usnavi can break, what hope does anyone else have? And hope’s all anyone's got. The only reason Vanessa’s stuck out school herself for as long as she has, aside from the fact Dani would kill her with her bare hands if she quit, is knowing she’s gonna need it to get herself out of this place some day, take her far far away from all the shit that’s happened here that’s always clawing at her chest, the things that are always making her do stupid reactionary shit like yelling at Marcela and Dani. Maybe Benny wasn’t so wrong about the rest of it, either.

**benny:  
** \- we cool or no?

 **vanessa:  
** \- yeah its fine  
-i know how to get usnavi to go back to school

***

**Nina**

Homework isn’t as exciting as it used to be when Nina was little. Most kids might argue homework was never exciting, but back in elementary and middle school she loved it. Book reports. Write a story about what you did over the summer. Look up one of the planets and make a fact sheet about it. Her dad would always be so proud of her doing her work the second she got home, but it didn’t feel like work to learn things she wanted to learn anyway.

Now it’s all algebra and stress, and she does it all straight away because if she doesn’t then she’d probably throw up from the anxiety of it hanging over her. It takes a lot more discipline. There’s no time to stare off a fire escape and dream. Whenever her mind tries to wander, she makes a note of the thought in a separate book to go back to later, and refocuses on the question at hand, even when the question at hand is _if we multiply a function f(x) by a number c, where c > 1, to get cf(x), what happens to the graph of f(x)?_

The counsellor said Usnavi could probably just attend some Saturday classes to do catch-up work for last semester. Nina or Benny could easily hold the store for a few hours at the weekends and wouldn’t need to be paid for it, and Abuela knows enough about the place she could supervise without having to do any heavy lifting. She writes down _Saturdays - cover shifts?_ in her other notebook.

Multiply a function, f(x) by a number c — What about this semester? She chews the end of her pen. She’s sure they’ll be lenient on any test-taking, so assuming he has to attend maybe two out of five sessions of each class a week to get credit, could she find someone to cover the store just for an hour or two at a time, who wouldn’t mind working for free? Mom might be able to do it. Dani might even spare Carla for a while. She writes that down in her other notebook, then adds _call Benny for Usnavi’s class schedule._

Okay. Algebra. f(x) multiplied by c — 

As though writing his name summoned him, Benny calls her before she even reads through the whole question.

“Hi,” she answers, a little cautiously after how they left things earlier.

“Hey, so Vanessa just text me saying she knows what to do about Usnavi and I think she’s onto somethin',” he says in a rush.

Nina grabs her second notebook and a pen. Algebra can wait. This is more important. “What’s the plan?”

“When are you next babysittin' Sonny?”

***

**Usnavi**

Abuela keeps telling Usnavi he spends too much time in the store. He opens at six-thirty, he closes at ten, or sometimes eleven, or however late he can before she comes in to fret at him till he gives in and comes to sleep at her place. Some nights he comes down from his apartment and naps in the stockroom on two chairs pushed together. 

Everyone keeps telling him he spends too much time in here.They don’t get it. In the store, Usnavi doesn’t have to think. He doesn’t have to talk to nobody. He doesn’t know _how_ to talk to people no more, whatever motor used to make his mouth run endlessly never came back online, and the idea of trying to force it honestly just makes him want to lie down on the floor and sleep for fifty years. So he stays safely dissolved into an automaton extension of the store’s purpose, nothing more than a pair of hands to stack shelves and a pair of feet to climb ladder. It’s easier that way. He don’t _like_ it. It’s just easier, and that’s all he’s got in him right now.

Except whenever Sonny comes in: today he’s charging through the door, Nina walking in more sedately behind him, and he runs right behind the counter to fling himself into a hug, shouting Usnavi’s name like he hasn’t seen him in decades. Usnavi can’t bring himself to blank him: being Sonny’s cousin is even more automatic than working the store.

“Hey, chiquito,” he says, smiling as best he can. “You behavin’ yourself for Nina?”

“Yeah! Well. Mostly.”

“We were just talking about jobs,” Nina says. “Tell him what you decided, Sonny.”

“Oh!” Sonny beams at him. “I’m gonna work here!”

With a sinking heart, Usnavi listens to Sonny lay out some rapidfire nonsense plan to drop out of school and work in the bodega, apparently convinced it’ll be nothing but banter and escapades and free candy like a fuckin’ PG-rated Kevin Smith movie. The first moment Sonny pauses for breath, Usnavi shakes his head. “No way, you ain’t doin’ _none_ of that. School’s important.”

Sonny makes an aggrieved noise. “But why?!”

“You need it so you can get a job.”

“If I work for you I’ll already have a job,” Sonny points out.

Usnavi rubs his temples. This is exhausting. “You need a _stable_ job.”

“Pssh, you ain’t never gonna fire me, I’m your cousin.”

“That don’t mean the bodega’s gonna be around forever. It’s hard to keep a business goin’, Sonny. Hell, I don’t even know if I’m gonna be able to make it last the year, never mind till you’re old enough to start workin’.”

Sonny frowns. “Then how come you left to work here? What about if _you_ gotta find another job?”

“I...well...that’s just how it is.”

“So then how come I _can’t_?”

“Because I say so.”

That does not fly with Sonny at all. No surprises there. “If you ain’t gotta go to school, I ain’t goin’ neither,” he says stubbornly.

Usnavi looks at Nina. She’s reading the back of a candy bar like its the next great American novel, clearly no intention of stepping in to back him up. He sighs. “Sonny, why don’t you go get yourself a soda? Invita la casa.”

Sonny whoops, immediately placated, and runs towards the drink fridge at the back. Usnavi takes the candy bar out of Nina’s hand.

“Oh, hi, Usnavi, what’s up?” she asks, innocently. He ain’t in the mood for it.

“You put him up to this, didn’t you? I can’t believe you of all people would encourage him to even _think_ about givin’ up school for this place just to try and make a point.”

“You’re giving me too much credit. We might have talked a bit about careers. but I didn’t tell him to say any of that, it was all his idea.” Nina gives him the sad eyes. “He looks up to you, you know that, right? You’re his hero.”

Some fuckin’ hero. “He shouldn’t. He got a better future than this place ahead of him, I ain’t havin’ him throw that away for nothin’. And I already told you I can’t go back anyway, I still can’t pay no staff.”

“We can help with that,” Nina says. “I—I know you told me to back off, but I may have talked to Mom. And Dad. And Abuela and Dani and —well, everyone, really. Most everyone’s had at least some experience working in a store, and spread out around everyone there’s ways we can make it work without you having to hire anyone or miss too much business. Dad said he can even pay a couple of the drivers who’ve done retail before if they need to sub in in an emergency.”

“I— _what_? Nina, they _can’t,_ I can’t just ask everyone to bend over backwards to—“

“When are you gonna get it through your head that we _want_ to?” she says, leans over the counter and takes his hand. “Just let us help you. Please. Don’t you deserve a future too?”

It ain’t a matter of whether he deserves it or not. Deserving is a luxury Usnavi’s got no time for, no space for false hope here. There’s the sound of the drinks fridge closing, the click-hiss of a soda can being opened as Sonny comes back to join them at the front.

“For his sake, at least,” Nina murmurs to Usnavi. She’s holding his hand nearly hard enough to hurt like she was doing in the waiting room at the hospital and Sonny’s drinking a free soda that Usnavi can barely afford to give him and he knows that they’re both playing him, it’s clear as glass. But nobody in his family’s ever graduated before, he’s the closest any of them have ever got. Does he want a failed business and nothing left from it but debt and heartache to be the only example he’s setting? If he don’t do it, who else is Sonny gonna look to?

“Fine,” he says, defeated. “I’ll go back to school.”

**Author's Note:**

> please don't forget to comment if you read it! it's what keeps me writing <3
> 
> i am on [tumblr](https://thisstableground.tumblr.com/)


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